I came home from church feeling extra holy. The sermon had been about forgiveness, patience, and resisting temptation. I was even humming the final hymn as I unlocked my front door.
“Today,” I told myself, “nothing can steal my peace.”
I was wrong.
The house was unusually quiet. My wife wasn’t in the living room, and I could hear faint snoring coming from our bedroom.
I smiled. “Poor thing must have been tired.”
I quietly opened the bedroom door, expecting to surprise her with a gentle kiss.
Instead, I nearly dropped my Bible.
There, stretched across my side of the bed, was a complete stranger. A grown man. Snoring like he paid the rent.
I froze.
He froze.
We stared at each other for three awkward seconds.
Then he sat up and shouted, “Who are you?”
I blinked.
“Who am I? Brother, who are you?”
The man looked around the room in confusion.
“Wait… this isn’t House Number 18?”
I replied, “No! This is House Number 81!”
He slapped his forehead.
“My goodness! My friends dropped me home after a wedding last night. I must have entered the wrong gate.”
Before I could process anything, my wife walked in carrying groceries.
She looked at me.
She looked at the stranger.
Then she sighed and said, “I leave the house for ten minutes and both of you have already invited guests?”
The confused man jumped off the bed so fast he almost left his shoes behind.
“I’m so sorry! I honestly thought this was my house.”
Just then, my neighbor burst through the open door, laughing so hard he could barely breathe.
“There you are! We’ve been looking for him all morning! He walked into the wrong compound after the party. We checked every house except yours!”
The stranger apologized at least twenty times before running out of the house, still embarrassed.
I sat on the edge of the bed, shook my head, and looked up at the ceiling.
“So this is what the pastor meant when he said, ‘Expect the unexpected after church.'”
Since that day, I don’t just lock my door.
I also double-check that any man sleeping in my bed is actually me.
