And up pops the Yard-Vac

Dictionary result for faith  /fāTH/ noun complete trust or confidence in someone or something.

I was raised in a household of faith, and when I say ‘faith’ I mean that my dad believed everything he preached over the pulpit and took the Bible literally, I learned my life lessons not from listening to his sermons, which I certainly did, but from watching his life and listening to the conversations he and my mother had about how God supplied the needs of our family over and over again. I have the faith my father showed me by his life.

My Uncle Harding told us about an incident that happened to him and it’s a story I drew from six months ago. My Uncle had bought a yard-vac to use on his church’s yard so it would always look good. He kept it stored on the church property inside of a fenced in enclosure that was locked so when he went one morning and saw the fence standing open with the yard-vac gone he knew it had been stolen. It angered him that someone had taken property that belonged to the house of God. He said he called out in a loud voice, “Yard-vac come home! Come right here to the place where you were taken!”He prayed to God in the name of Jesus that his words would come to pass. Long story short it happened just as he had said and the men who stole it had to bring it back and were just going to leave it in the yard, my Uncle told them, “No, you stole it from inside that fence and you are going to take it back to where you took it from!”You would have to know the commanding presence of my Uncle and my dad to know that those guys had the fear of God in them and did as he said. So the yard-vac came home.

Why have I told you this right now?

Six months ago on a Monday morning my granddaughter left to go to work, suddenly she burst back through the door crying and when I finally understood what she was saying it was that her car had been broken into and her very expensive Dooney and Bourke purse, Disney edition, had been stolen with all her identification, money, credit cards and camera plus some very precious memorabilia in it. It had been given to her as a gift from her new husband and she was devastated. She would have to cancel credit cards, get a new drivers license, get insurance cards and she had been carrying her Social Security card, she feared identity theft.

I remembered what Uncle had told us so I stood in the door and called her purse and her belongings back to her. I prayed that God would hear and let that prayer be answered. The next few weeks she got everything replaced but I never gave up the hope that the purse and the belongings in it would return.

Today almost six months to the day she came in from work and she was talking fast, her eyes were huge and in her hand she had her very expensive Dooney and Bourke purse. When she pulled into the driveway she said it was propped up near our mailbox! I thank God that someone had an honest heart or maybe the purse was speaking to them the way the yard-vac spoke to the man who stole it saying, “Take me back I don’t belong to you”,yes, that was the rest of the story!

I admit it didn’t come back to the car but the mailbox was close enough, no complaints! She opened the purse and everything was in there, except whatever cash she had, but more importantly her credit cards, driver’s license, Social Security card, pictures, the special necklace her brother had given her and other memento were all right there! The purse is dirty and looks a mess, the credit cards were not in the folder she kept them in but they were in the bottom of the purse proving that someone had actually taken them out but had put them all back!  Praise God for answered prayers!