Answer to prayer delayed

On Thursday I came home from work and went to the kitchen, on the way to the garage to put away my bicycle helmet. Sister Nectar stopped me in the kitchen and started to tell me about cleaning out the ice that had built up in the freezer. Our ice trays tend to leak or spill when we put them in the over-crowded freezer. She explained to me that she had a place in the freezer where she keeps small containers of applesauce. The place for the applesauce is just under the place where we put the ice trays. Rebecca likes a little frozen applesauce for her school lunches, Sister Nectar told me. She said that she hadn't gotten into this part of the freezer since school ended last June. So there was a lot of ice built up that she had to remove before she could put new containers of applesauce in this special spot in the freezer. This was the beginning of the new school year. There was more explanation, and I kept waiting for the punch line, "So be more careful when you put the ice trays in the freezer." My mind had begun to wander when she finally dropped the bombshell, "And that's how I found my wedding ring frozen in the ice. It was just sitting there, the lower portion of the ring frozen in the ice, the upper portion upright. Just like it was on display in a jewelry case in a jewelry store."

It took a second for the information to sink in. "You found your rings?" Yes, indeed she had. She hadn't lost them in Los Angeles. They were never thrown into the trash. They hadn't fallen in the kitchen, or the sink. They weren't in the storage closet. She hadn't dropped them in Costco. We didn't need to have taken that trip on Father's Day and go through the trash in Los Angeles. They were safely on ice in our own freezer the whole time. Amazing.

My sister told me that our prayers had been answered. Indeed, they were. The answer didn't come before we had expended a great deal of effort in looking for the rings. I don't suppose I'll ever know why God didn't answer our prayers a lot earlier.