I Lost It

Losing things is an act of which has been a nuisance that seems will be forever mine. It's the minor things I lose, things I seem to have given myself permission to be less attentive to keeping found. I have always been notorious for misplacing my sun glasses.  Then a few months ago I elected to have cataracts removed from both eyes.  The attending optometrist asked if I wanted  prescription lenses placed permanently in my eyes.  Since the cost being expensive, I opted out.  So, I have not only my sun glasses but a pair of glasses that I only need for reading and night driving. So now, to my chagrin and the vexation of Bettyann, I begin searching everywhere because I forget where I used them last. Most days I haphazardly place them somewhere near the first thing that was on my mind as I laid a book - wherever that was—which means that sometimes I find them in the living room, bathroom, and other times the bedroom, or maybe the kitchen or garage depending upon if I am reading a pamphlet, etc.

Thus, habitually missing eye glasses are little more than a nuisance to me because finding them is usually as simple as retracing my steps—and there is always Bettyann if they don't turn up right away. To her, however, lost glasses are a source of unnecessary frustration. She has worked patiently on the problem; I now have a lanyard for the sun glasses which I ware around my neck during daylight and where ever she finds my eye glasses, she returns them to the little stand by my lounge chair. Most days this seems to do the trick. 

Other days I more resemble the woman in Jesus's parable tearing apart the house to find the lost coin, lighting a lamp, sweeping the house, searching carefully until she finds it. And perhaps this is part of my unflustered attitude with lostglasses—I know I will eventually find them. In fact, the only time I lose them is when I am comfortably in the confines of my own house. 

In two different parables, Jesus compares the sentiments that accompany the person who has lost something to the sentiments of the heavens over the one who is lost. When the woman in the parable has found the coin she was searching for, "she calls her friends and neighbors together and says, 'Rejoice with me; I have found my lost coin.'" "In the same way," Jesus concludes, "there is rejoicing in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner who repents" (cf. Luke 15:8-10). 

My lost glasses, keys or pens or coins do not evoke in me such sentiments. And I wonder how easy it is to carry a similar lightness about a world buried in injustice, lost in pain, distraction, or indulgence. How easy is it to give myself permission to be inattentive to so much around me, to see a world of need as something minor, to view my own wandering as a problem that will work itself out like lost glasses? No doubt the heavens grieve over my inattention even as they grieve over the wandering prodigal.

I was reacquainted recently with the pain of longing after something lost. Unlike misplaced glasses, I was neither confident that it would turn up nor was the thought of a "getting my helper, Bettyann," comforting in the least. Sentimentally, it was irreplaceable and I grieved its loss. I found myself recounting all of the memories associated with it. My mind was haunted by where it might be, whose hands it might be in, whether I would ever see it again. And when I found it, like the woman in Jesus's parable, I celebrated, but confess, not with anyone , out of my personal embarrassment.

I'm learning that when I lose something dear to me and find myself hoping against hope for its return, I have been given the slightest illustration of God's longing to gather me unto himself and his grief when I will not have it. When Jesus spoke of lost sheep, he gave an image of the personal nature of God's love for every face I pass on the street, each child I overlook, each person to which I have given myself permission to be inattentive. "Suppose one of you has a hundred sheep and loses one of them. Does he not leave the ninety-nine in the open country and go after the lost sheep until he finds it?  And when he finds it, he joyfully puts it on his shoulders and goes home. Then he calls his friends and neighbors together and says, 'Rejoice with me; I have found my lost sheep'" (Luke 15:3-6).

Unto the shepherd who pursues lives and searches hearts, whose arm is not too short to save, the psalmist confessed, "I have strayed like a lost sheep." Undoubtedly the heavens rejoice over my heart that recognizes its need to be found. Whether I have strayed from the will of God or strayed in my attention to a world in need of being found, he who came for the lost is calling me back into the careful arms of the shepherd who has not quit searching.