Answered Prayer

In 1958, my dad was really starting to like baseball. He was about 11 at the time and his dad went to a winter banquet put on by the rotary club. A guy named Stan Lopata was there and he was a star player for the Philadelphia Phillies. In fact, just a couple years earlier than that, he had hit 32 home runs, which was a really big deal! Well, his dad got an autograph from Stan Lopata at this banquet and it was written on an envelope. When he came home, he gave that envelope to my dad. None of his friends' dad went to this banquet, so dad was the only one with his autograph. He was thrilled!!!! It was his most prized possession. When he'd get his cheese boxes out with his baseball cards inside, that envelope was with them too. He showed everyone this autograph and just was so proud of this thing. Now, after a few months, maybe a year, he had left his baseball cards out with this envelope, as he often did, when his mom picked it up and threw it away. Apparently not realizing that THIS was the envelope with Stan's autograph on it! When dad found out, he was crushed. Devastated! He ran upstairs and wept. Thinking maybe it had fallen behind the baseboard, he pulled it from the wall to check. Wasn't there. Dug through the trash. Wasn't there. He looked in every nook and cranny in that house. Looked under every piece of paper. Everywhere!!!! Nothing. He prayed and prayed and prayed, "Lord, PLEASE let me find this envelope!!!!!". Nothing. It was lost forever. God had apparently told him "no". He gave his mom a hard time for years and years. Even in her 70s, he'd bring up the fact that she threw away his autographed envelope. Well....... something amazing happened today. Today he bought a pack of Heritage baseball cards, which are reprints of Topps cards from the 1950s and 1960s. He bought just one pack and as he was going through it, he saw an autographed card. The signature was in red, so he knew it was something special. When he got to that card and read it, do you know who it was? STAN LOPATA!!!! 50 years after his autographed envelope from Stan Lopata was thrown away, he got that autograph back!! Stan is 83 yrs old now and signed just 60 cards. 60! And, dad got #57 today. God DOES answer prayer. Sometimes when he means "wait", he means "wait a really long time". :-) I bet Grandma is looking down from heaven saying, "See? I got it back for you after all.". Wow!!