"Hashem, why now? What do You want from me in the middle of the night?"

Around a year ago, I was driving back from a wedding in Lakewood late at night, exhausted and pressured. A flat tire made me pull over in the middle of the expressway. I remember standing there at the roadside, which felt like it was in the middle of nowhere, and thinking, ‘Hashem, why now? What do You want from me in the middle of the night?’

I called the wonderful people from Chaveirim, who came out to change the tire. As they had used the emergency tire, I had to drive back slowly and with care, but the fellows told me about a place near Boro Park that was open 24 hours, where I could get a real replacement. I arrived there at 2:30 a.m. and had the tire changed. While they were working, the manager of the place, a black guy, called me to come over behind a van. I was more than a little nervous, but what choice did I have? Anxiously, I followed him.

“I want to show you something,” he said, and took out a small bag of… tefillin.

“Where did you get this?” I asked.

He said that someone had told him that it was something important, and for some months he’d been trying to find its owner.

I opened the bag and I saw the name. It was a Lubavitcher name, so right then and there, I texted some people who I know in Crown Heights, and then I called my daughter to look up the phone numbers of people who might fit the name.  Right then, in the middle of the night, I called one of the numbers she came up with.

“Did you lose your tefillin?”

It was an immediate yes. A half year before, on Chanukah, someone had broken into his car in the parking lot of Home Depot. When he got home, he realized that his tefillin were missing. The auto mechanic said that he had found it at Lowes.

So I returned the tefillin, and I made a new friend in Crown Heights. And now I know why I got a flat that took me to a 24-hour tire center.

—ISAAC HONIG, Singer

(Originally featured in Mishpacha, Issue 859)