Late one evening a professor sat at his desk working on the next day's lectures. He shuffled through the papers and mail placed there by his housekeeper. He began to throw them in the wastebasket when one magazine–not even addressed to him but delivered to his office by mistake–caught his attention. It fell open to an article titled “The Needs of the Congo Mission.”
The professor began reading it idly, but then he was consumed by these words: “The need is great here. We have no one to work the northern province of Gabon in the central Congo. And it is my prayer as I write this article that God will lay His hand on one–one on whom, already, the Master's eyes have been cast–that he or she shall be called to this place to help us.” The professor closed the magazine and wrote in his diary: “My search is over.” He gave himself to go to the Congo.
The professor's name was Albert Schweitzer. That little article, hidden in a periodical intended for someone else, was placed by accident in Schweitzer's mailbox. By chance his housekeeper put the magazine on the professor's desk. By chance he noticed the title, which seemed to leap out at him. Dr. Schweitzer became one of the great figures this century in a humanitarian work nearly unmatched in human history. Chance? No. Providence.
— Dan Betzer, Ft. Meyers, Florida. Pentecostal Evangel. Leadership, Vol. 12, no. 3.
See: 1 Sa 3:4; Ps 31:19; Jer 1:5; Mt 25:34; Lk 1:43.