An avreich from Bnei Brak relates: I wanted to buy things for Pesach at a discounted price, and I made a large order at a chessed sale. When I ordered, I was informed that the products would come to a specific place on a certain day, and we could come to collect them between 6 and 9 p.m. After 9 p.m., they said, they would take no responsibility for any products left at the site.
On the designated day I came to the place and loaded all my things onto our shopping cart. Back at home I reviewed my list to make sure that I had taken everything I ordered and that I didn’t mistakenly take something I hadn’t ordered. That’s how I discovered that I had taken a type of Pesach cookies that I hadn’t ordered.
Although it was already after 9, I knew there were still some products out there, so I hurried back out, put down the box of cookies, and took the type that I had actually ordered.
The minute I put down the box of cookies I had mistakenly taken, a young man arrived, looked at the list in his hands, and took the box. It was the only box of cookies of its kind that was there.
I asked him, “Why did you come after the designated time?” I knew that there were few products left at this hour.
“I regularly learn until 9,” he responded, “and I didn’t want to miss my learning time because of the sale. I told myself that I would learn as always, and Hashem would arrange for whatever was mine to wait for me.”
I was amazed. Now I understood why I had made the mistake. When I returned the cookies after 9 p.m., there were none of that type left, and it was logical to assume that if I hadn’t taken them, someone else would have taken them. Hashem arranged that for a full hour I safeguarded the cookies for this avreich so that he ultimately got exactly what he ordered, in his own time.
