This one hit close to home for me.

We have friends who are identical twins, I’m guessing late 40s, who own a house together. One of them was giving a talk in church today and started with the usual teasing about which one is the evil twin brother.

But then, as he went on, he told the story of something we’d known only the barest outline of.

Recently, he was supposed to meet up with a friend over dinner. He was dog tired that day, getting more so, and finally let himself realize he just didn’t think he could manage it; he was just going to call them and cancel with profuse apologies and go home and rest.

He sent up a little prayer to ask if that was the right thing to do, just to, y’know, be sure, because sometimes the small decisions matter more than we’d think.

What he didn’t expect was an intense feeling of, NO!! GO. TO. THAT. DINNER!!

How…but okay, so he turned the car that way.

He didn’t even get out of the car. He couldn’t. His friend saw him and took one look and called 911, and he ended up in emergency heart surgery.

He stopped the story there a moment, took a deep breath, looked around the room taking us all in, our physical, actual presence and his own, remembering, and continued.

If I had gone home instead, he said–my brother was out of town. He would have come home and… I don’t… My friend saved my life.