Life Often Works In Mysterious but Wonderful Ways

Here is an inspiring story I recently heard that I thought well worth telling here in my own words:
His name was Fleming, and he was a poor Scottish farmer. One day, while trying to eke out a living for his family from the hard earth, he heard a loud cry for help coming from a nearby swamp. He immediately dropped his tools and ran to the swamp. There, mired to his waist in the black bog and sinking fast, was a terrified young boy, screaming for help, while kicking and struggling in vain to free himself.

Without hesitation, Farmer Fleming leaped into the bog and saved the lad from what could have been a slow and terrifying death.
The very next day, a fancy carriage pulled up outside the Scotsman's meager dwelling. An elegantly dressed nobleman stepped out and introduced himself as the father of the boy Farmer Fleming had saved. "I want to repay you," said the nobleman. "You saved my son's life.
"No, I can't accept payment for what I did," the Scottish farmer replied, waving away the offer of money. “I only did what was right. Anyone else would have done the same thing.” No amount of insistence on the part of the nobleman would get the farmer to accept the offered reward money.

At that moment, the farmer's own son arrived home at the door of the farmer’s humble family hut.

"Is this your son?" the nobleman asked.

”Yes," the farmer replied proudly. “That is my boy.”

"I'll make a deal with you,” said the nobleman. “Let me provide your son with the identical level of education my own son will enjoy. If your lad is anything like his father, I have no doubt he will grow up to be a man we will both be proud of."

The farmer finally agreed and that is exactly what the nobleman did. Farmer Fleming's son attended the very best schools in England. In time, he graduated from St. Mary's Hospital Medical School in London and went on to make history. He became known throughout the entire world as the renowned Sir Alexander Fleming, the man who discovered Penicillin.

Years afterward, the same nobleman's son who had been rescued by the farmer from drowning in the swamp, was stricken down and became seriously ill with pneumonia.

What saved his life this time? Penicillin … discovered by the farmer’s son, who would never have even been able to attend medical school if not for the nobleman’s gratitude to the farmer for saving the life of his own son.

The name of the English nobleman? Lord Randolph Churchill.
His son's name?
Winston – later Sir Winston – Churchill, one of the two principal men who helped save the world from the evil tyranny of Hitler and the Nazis.
It is worth remembering … whenever one does the right thing – the moral and principled thing – Life often has a way of rewarding us according to an agenda all of its own . . . a mysterious, wonderful, surprising agenda that we could not even dream of anticipating.