{"id":25292,"date":"2026-03-11T17:12:39","date_gmt":"2026-03-11T17:12:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/gpbookstore.org\/articles\/uncategorized\/the-answer-to-a-prayer-on-34th-street\/"},"modified":"2026-04-10T06:19:58","modified_gmt":"2026-04-10T06:19:58","slug":"the-answer-to-a-prayer-on-34th-street","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/gpbookstore.org\/articles\/prayer\/true-stories-of-answered-prayer\/the-answer-to-a-prayer-on-34th-street\/","title":{"rendered":"The Answer to a Prayer on 34th Street"},"content":{"rendered":"

Answers to prayers come in all shapes and sizes, sometimes when you\u2019re not even aware that you\u2019ve said that prayer. Maybe it\u2019s something you wished for, something you held in your mind.<\/p>\n

My wife, Carol Wallace<\/a>, is a dyed-in-the-wool Anglophile and I come pretty close to it. Lately we\u2019ve been watching the British TV series Downton Abbey<\/em>, all about a British earl, his family and his American heiress wife in pre-World War I England.<\/p>\n

The series is catnip for Carol because years ago she co-authored a book called To Marry an English Lord<\/a><\/em>, an anecdotal history of that turn-of-the-last-century phenomenon when American heiresses trolled English waters for British aristocrats. The lords needed cash to repair ancient roofs while the American ladies were glad of titles to give them patina.<\/p>\n

The screenwriter Julian Fellowes has done a capital job of capturing the era, upstairs and downstairs. So far only the first seven episodes have aired in America but Britain is launching new episodes. Because of that, an article appeared last weekend in the Daily Telegraph<\/em><\/a> profiling Fellowes. Turns out To Marry an English Lord<\/em> was a source of inspiration. Carol was thrilled.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou should write him,\u201d I said. \u201cTell him how grateful you are.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI would love to,\u201d she said, \u201cbut how can I find his address?\u201d<\/p>\n

There was the prayer, or at least the unspoken prayer. How would we find Julian Fellowes\u2019 English address? A friend of ours often quotes her mom\u2019s dictum: \u201cWhat you hold in your mind you meet in the marketplace.\u201d That too could be a description of prayer.<\/p>\n

Yesterday on my way home from work, heading across 34th Street, I passed a good friend and her friend who happens to work for a British charity. (She also happens to be a minister\u2019s wife, but that doesn\u2019t figure here.) Thanks to Facebook, both women knew of and mentioned Carol\u2019s six-degrees-of-separation connection to Downton Abbey.<\/em><\/p>\n

Then out of the blue my friend\u2019s friend said, \u201cYou know, I actually have Julian Fellowes\u2019 address.\u201d Bingo. Just what we\u2019d been looking for.<\/p>\n

OK, it\u2019s not a big deal, but such little connections always reinforce my desire to keep the big connections going. I rushed home to Carol and said, \u201cYou\u2019ll never guess what I have.\u201d The answer to her query.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Answers to prayers come in all shapes and sizes, sometimes when you\u2019re not even aware that you\u2019ve said that prayer. Maybe it\u2019s something you wished for, something you held in your mind. My wife, Carol Wallace, is a dyed-in-the-wool Anglophile and I come pretty close to it. Lately we\u2019ve been watching the British TV series […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":127,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"ep_exclude_from_search":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[187],"tags":[30],"ppma_author":[476],"class_list":["post-25292","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-true-stories-of-answered-prayer","tag-prayer"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nThe Answer to a Prayer on 34th Street - Guideposts Articles<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"noindex, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"The Answer to a Prayer on 34th Street\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Answers to prayers come in all shapes and sizes, sometimes when you\u2019re not even aware that you\u2019ve said that prayer. 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