The Bible
Losing something is upsetting, irrespective of its value. It’s also inconvenient as it’s a time-waster re-tracing your steps trying to find where the lost item might be.
Murray Smith
A couple of weeks ago I found a ‘new looking’ electric bike charger unit in the middle of a busy roadway. Probably fell off a ‘carrier’ or out of the rider’s back-pack maybe?
Discovering its value, I took it to the police station. I hope the owner has been happily re-united with it.
Probably the most terrible feeling of losing anything is if your child ever goes missing. Years ago when our kids were little, they got lost – or it’s more accurate to say, we lost them…not that we’re candidates for a ‘parenting with negligence’ award, it just happened so quickly.
I took one of my preschool daughters to a mall and I needed to use the men’s bathroom.
Parent rooms were not available. It seemed the best and ‘safest’ thing to leave her in a little foyer outside the “Men’s” area, with strict instructions to stay there for a minute. I bustled into the loo, completed my mission and went out to find her gone.
It wasn’t long, but the horror of discovering your child isn’t where they’re meant to be, is sickening. I ran back into the toilets with my mind racing. She was actually ‘sitting’ in a wall hung urinal, her little legs swinging from the ‘bowl’. The mixed feelings of relief and disgust were hard to sort! She’d evidently followed me just after I‘d gone in and I’d missed her.
My wife eclipsed my effort with two of our ‘littlies’ parking by a shop to race in and pick up something. Four year old and two year old unbuckled themselves planning to find Mum as ‘she’d taken too long and might be lost’. They ‘found’ her after she had returned to find an empty car and bolted back inside, panicked by tormenting abduction thoughts plus other awful possibilities.
A very unimpressed security guard appeared with the children in tow and some handy parenting advice. Such episodes hint at how utterly dreadful it must be for any parent or care-giver when a child goes missing and is lost interminably under uncertain circumstances.
Flat Lay of the Holy Bible and Items on the Desk. Photo: Chris Liu, pexels.com
Chapter 15 of Luke’s Gospel in the Bible, is devoted to three stories Jesus told about lost things.
A sheep, a coin and a son. A man had plenty of sheep but discovering one was lost, he searched until he found it, carrying it home on his shoulders rejoicing. The woman who lost a silver coin was overjoyed too, throwing a celebration when she found it.
The father ‘lost’ his son when the boy demanded an early inheritance payout. After leaving home he quickly blew everything in a splurge of riotous cavorting.
Miserably shamed, he came to his senses, returning home offering to be a lowly unpaid servant to his dad. The father saw his repentant son coming and ran to embrace him. Everyone enjoyed a massive homecoming party except a self-righteous, resentful older brother.
Jesus’ stories describe God’s joy and heaven’s celebration when one ‘lost’ broken person is restored.
Holy Bible on Stand. Photo: Pixabay
