Did you lose anything this week? or today? or last week? And how frustrated did you get?
This week I experienced losing! It is hard to admit but--The catsup got lost! Now you would think that catsup would be hard to lose. My catsup is supposed to live on a shelf in the door of my refrigerator. But this week when I needed it, it was not living in its normal place. I searched and searched some more. I looked in the unlikely places in the refrigerator where it does not normally live. I looked in the cupboard, and on the cupboards, I looked on the table, I called for help in looking. Meanwhile, the dish I was making for lunch really needed some catsup. But catsup remained lost! How can catsup get lost? The mystery of the week! And it still remained lost, and another catsup had to substitute. I'm pretty sure that I must have helped it get lost but that doesn't help me find my lost catsup.
Other things often get lost. Since we have been getting a new floor in our dining room, we have wanted to use various items like hammers, tape measures, drills, etc. The tape measure and hammer joined the ranks of lost items in our house this week. You would think that since there are several tape measures and hammers in our possessions that at least one of each would not be lost. Nevertheless, I heard complaints about them being nowhere! Kind of like my catsup! The missing items tend to make one wonder about the state of your mind when you cannot find the simplest of items. Eventually the tape measure and hammer did get found. The tape measure was where it was used last and not put away. The hammer had slipped down and out of sight.
The catsup is still missing!
We are slow about getting our house back in order after getting a new floor because we have taken the opportunity to fix and repair a couple of other things while everything is out of place. That makes not finding misplaced things in our upset house more understandable--but not the missing catsup! It is easy to decide that I want...???.. but then not know where to go to get it or find it.
And I still do not know where to find the catsup!
Because our normal source of heat is not available to us, we have been using a couple of electric heaters to keep the cold temperatures outside from invading our home. That worked pretty good for us until one night suddenly our house went dark! We "lost" power! We missed it greatly and immediately tried to "find" it again by searching for the breaker that had blown because of overheating. We wanted the power and lights back!
Socks have been known to get lost in the laundry. Wallets get lost. Travelers get lost on their way to a destination. Often there is a notice of a lost pet that a family wants found and returned. Have you ever been lost in thought? I have. Then I lose out on what is being said. Sometimes it is in listening to a speech or a sermon, or when I sit down to read a book or the Bible. Now that is sad! Sometimes I get lost in thought during prayer and feel ashamed.
Time gets lost! We can never get time back. Time is lost when you walk out to the car to go somewhere but neglected to take the key for the car with you and you have to go back to get what you should have gotten in the first place. It would have saved time that you now have lost forever.
Time was lost in the Bible. Hezekiah wanted to lose time when he asked Isaiah for a sign to confirm that the Lord would heal him. And Isaiah replies, "Behold, I will cause the shadow on the sundial, which has gone down on the sundial of Ahaz with the sun, to return backward ten steps. So the sun returned ten steps on the sundial on which it had gone down.” Isaiah 38:8.
Though perhaps he didn't lose time, maybe he gained time??
Losing things and finding things was important to God. You can find 49 Bible verses about "lost." He placed several famous and important stories of losing things in our Bible. Lost coins and sons and sheep. Each has a lesson for us to study and remember. But most of all, the thing that I would regret losing more than anything would be eternal life with God. I do not want to be lost to God. I want to be found. I want all my family to be found and not lost! That is my prayer!
"Jesus told a parable about a shepherd who had 100 sheep and one of them got away--and was lost. Will Jesus not leave the ninety-nine on the hills and go in search of the one who wandered off? And if he finds it, believe me when I say he is happier about that one sheep than the ninety-nine that did not wander away. Similarly, your heavenly Father does not want any of His people to perish. God is a Father. He counts his children. He is glad that some are safe in Christ, prepared for eternity, and nestled close to his heart. But some are missing, and others have gone missing. God sent Jesus on a mission to "seek and save the lost." Luke (19:10). God does not forsake the 99! But his heart aches for those who have yet to enter the field."
(from a Pizza Ranch blog)
PS--I learned something while writing these thoughts! I had to learn about the words lose, loose, losing and loosing. Spell-check has not been happy with me!! I fear I "lost" out on a grammar lesson somewhere. Never too old to "find" something to learn.
