Christian Lopez could have made a “cool” fifty thousand dollars… at least. Instead, he didn’t ask for a single thing. And that is the real “cool” in the story.

Lopez happened to be sitting in the left field seats at Yankee Stadium on Saturday, July 9^th when Derek Jeter hit a towering homerun for his hall-of-fame-first-round-ballot- clinching 3,000^th hit.  In the fan scrum that followed after the ball landed near him, Lopez emerged triumphant… with Jeter’s baseball in hand. Stadium officials hastily escorted Lopez to the inner bowels of the stadium and asked him what he wanted for the ball. He thought for a moment then decided simply to give the ball to Jeter, without a price; without strings attached. The simple gesture has made him a kind of Yankee folk-hero.  How cool is that…

“God, thank you for common, genuine goodness. Thank you for Christian Lopez, and his simple act of decency. He is already receiving more blessing in the form of good will for his generosity than $50,000 could have ever purchased. See fit to give him even more!And while his act of decent kindness happened to be very public, help us to open our eyes to the many other expressions of selfless goodness that happen all around us every day. There is much to fear; there is much to make us angry; there is much that will dull our hopes. But when we open our eyes we can see your heart of grace expressed time and time and time again, here and now, through the common, genuine acts of goodness happening each day. You are God. You are alive and well. You are, even now, saving this world and answering our prayers, “…Your Kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven…”