My daughter visited me last weekend. She was depressed and discouraged because of a corporate legal battle she has been caught up in through no wrongdoing on her part. Named a party in a lawsuit between a client and a financial institution she is bombarded with legal fees and the worry of losing all that she has worked for. Although she has E&O Insurance, suddenly the insurance company has refused to pay the latest $28000.00 legal bill, of which $6000 is past due. To her dismay her attorney informs her that as the case gets closer to trial, the legal bills are increasing at the rapid rate of $10,000 or more per month – due and payable before they will represent her further. The case is about to go to trial. She has no money to hire another attorney. She has no money to pay the current attorney.
To make matters worse an attorney her company was using in another matter committed fraud and stole funds from her; funds she desperately needs. She is “attorney poor”, yet must find another attorney to file a lawsuit against the E&O Insurance Company who refuses to pay the claim and also against the attorney who defrauded her of thousands of dollars. She has nowhere to turn.
“I don’t know what to do! Mom, please pray that we can find an attorney who will take this case without asking for money upfront. Please pray that the insurance company will pay the claim.” She pleaded; her blue eyes clouded with worry and brimming with unshed tears.
We were totally unaware that God was already working on her behalf as we talked on my front porch that Saturday morning. She had learned to trust Him from the earliest days of her childhood. It was harder to trust Him as an adult, but she grasped the straw of hope that was presented to her.
“I’m going to call this attorney someone recommended to me,” she said. “I heard he is a decent man who hates dishonest lawyers. I’m going to lay out my case before him and ask him what he can do. Maybe he will take the case pro bono just to get his hands on this crook who has defrauded me, or, at the least on a contingency basis.”
I gulped. Pro bono? My faith suddenly felt pretty feeble but I smiled and spoke of God’s miraculous intervention with a lot more conviction than I actually felt at the moment. “Oh God! I prayed silently. Please, please give her a miracle!”
It was an impossible situation as far as my human mind could reason. Attorneys do not work for nothing. After the first “free” consultation, their fees can range from $150 to $500 per hour and more. My daughter needed a miracle. And she needed it “right now.” As I took her need to the Lord, I felt a calm assurance that her problem would be solved. I told her not to worry, that God would take care of it. I didn’t know how — I just knew He would.
I love it when God moves into an impossible situation. By Thursday of this week He had “done it again.” Like dominos falling one after another solutions to problems were discovered. My daughter called the attorney that had been recommended and he was indeed more than willing to take her cases on a contingency basis — even willing to take one of them pro bono! The insurance company has paid the past due $6000 attorney fee and there is reason to believe they will pay the rest as it comes due. The attorney who defrauded her is in “hot water” now with the Bar Association and the State Supreme court and may lose his license. The legal case between the client and financial institution is required to go to mediation without her.
As she sat in the new attorney’s office gratitude to God washed through her. “Are you a religious man?” she asked him. When he assured her that He was, indeed, a fellow-believer in Christ, she told him about how we had prayed for a miracle.
Then to her utter amazement he smiled and told her that when he and his wife had left church on Sunday morning, his wife said to him, “When I was praying, I felt like the Lord was telling me that someone is going to call you this week who really needs your help and they can’t pay. God wants you to help this person.”
Does God answer prayer? You bet!