The Apology
In late summer of 1985 I visited a few relatives and friends in Germany. While in Hamburg, I saw an old friend who owns and runs a small goldsmith shop and studio close to the city. Since her husband, who had also been a friend and colleague, had passed over many years before, she mentioned a few times her concern regarding security in the shop where she spent most of the time alone.
I carried a small spare photograph of Swami with me. I bought a nice little picture frame and put it in a showcase next to the counter. I said, “Sai Baba will protect you. I believe in it and you must do the same.”
She thanked me for the picture and said she believed in Baba even though she knew little about Him other than what I had told her.
Fourteen months passed. One day in late November of 1986, I received a phone call from Germany. It was my friend in Hamburg. Totally upset and excited, she told me that she had just been held-up in her shop by a young man waving a pistol at her and threatening her life. He demanded five of the most valuable rings from the central showcase. She was not able to step to the side in order to press the silent alarm connecting the shop to the police.
The thief took the five rings and, moving backwards, threatened to shoot if she followed him. He left the shop and the police arrived minutes after the alarm was activated. But by then the thief had vanished. I felt sorry for her when she said, “You told me that Sai Baba would protect me and I really believed so much in it.” (So did I.) Feeling deeply with her, I could only say, “He actually has helped and protected you; you might have been hurt—or worse—if the man was a violent type.”
After the telephone call, my thoughts went around in circles. I was aware of her predicament since the valuable rings were not insured as she could not afford the insurance. The loss was substantial for her.
A few days later I received a long letter from her. To my bewilderment, she wrote to say that two days after the incident, she received a phone call from a Catholic priest in an outer suburb, asking whether her shop had been held up two days before. Bewildered about his knowledge of the incident (at her request, the newspapers had not mentioned the robbery), she admitted it had happened. In return, she wanted to know where he had obtained the information.
The priest told her that a young man came to him and handed over five rings and a gun, saying that he had committed a holdup in a jewelry shop at such and such an address. He said he had threatened a woman in the shop with the gun in order to obtain the valuable rings. He asked the priest to return the rings, saying he had not found a single peaceful moment since the robbery.
Grateful and happy, my friend visited the priest who gave her the stolen rings.
But Swami works even more thoroughly. A few days later, the young man walked into the shop to apologize in a really nice way and to ask to be forgiven. And, he was!
~Wolram Wennrich, Melbourne, Australia
Source: Sanathana Sarathi, March 1987
