Beyond the oceans

"God, who gives life to the dead, and who calls things that are not as if they were." Romans 4.17

My paternal grandfather was born in 1909 in Chicago, United States. His parents were part of the Sicilian immigration wave that took place in the early twentieth century. Unfortunately, when he was about two years old, his father and mother divorced. His dad was a tough man. One day he handed it to a person who brought him back to Sicily. He never saw his mother again. At that time, crossing the Atlantic Ocean was the journey of a lifetime and finding a child was not as easy as today. This is how he grew up, far from his mother, as an orphan.

My great-grandmother remarried and had nine daughters and a boy. After her second marriage, she gave her life to the Lord. Every day she prayed for her son so he could meet Jesus where he was.

"Prayer is more powerful than seas and oceans."

In the late 1940s, with his wife and children, my "Papi Mercioni" imigrated to France. A few years later, he heard about God's love and gave his heart to Jesus. In the early 1970s he began the journey to meet his American family for the first time. His mother was already dead, but he had sisters and a brother. He was over sixty when he met them. It was there that he learned that his mother was a Christian and had prayed for him for a long time.

The Atlantic and the Mediterranean separated a mother from her son, but prayer is more powerful than seas and oceans. From Chicago, she called to existence what seemed to be dead thousands of miles from her, and by the power of the Spirit of God the miracle took place.

A prayer for today

Today, whatever ocean is in front of you, call things that are not as if they were.

Patrice Martorano

Source (The Thought of the Day)