Lost and Never Found?

We’ve all misplaced something. We know what it’s like to go hunting for our keys or our cell phone or our favorite pair of shoes hiding somewhere in the back of the closet. We remember having our hands on whatever has gone missing, but we just can’t recall where we turned loose of it. There’s another reality we might have experienced: losing something that we don’t remember personally putting anywhere. Someone I know claims there is a secret opening in her dresser drawer to a parallel universe which leaves behind orphaned single socks. There may be one in the dryer too!

Depending on what is lost, we may search for hours or days for it because it is important to us. Some things, like mate-less socks, don’t prompt such a vigorous hunt. We might shrug and hope that what’s gone missing will turn up some day. And maybe what disappeared does indeed mysteriously surface from the parallel universe or wherever it had been hiding. But some things are lost and never found.

There’s much more loss in life than the disappearance of material stuff. We get lost driving in an unknown city despite the best efforts of the voice coming from a navigation system trying to keep us on track. We get lost in our thoughts and realize later we missed part of a friend’s conversation. We might even speak of losing our way in life, floundering after what we believed were rock-solid plans have fallen apart. And when a loved one dies, we will say that we’ve lost them even though we know all too well where they’ve been laid to rest. Depending on who we’ve “lost,” we might find ourselves looking for that person in places they once occupied. Death can seem to be a parallel universe with the door bolted shut and the lights turned off. We may lament that our loved ones are lost to us, never to be found other than in the cluttered closet of our memories.

While Mother Nature appears to be springing to life again after the winter season, the approaching weekend brings with it the observance of Easter. Daffodils and bunnies and baby chicks and brightly colored eggs are all over stores and greeting cards as the memorable mascots of the day. Christians beg to differ, rejoicing instead in the testimony recorded in the Bible that death’s dark door was shattered open by the resurrection light of the Author of Life who desires more than anything else that we know ourselves to be found in and never lost to a risen Lord. It's little wonder poet Francis Thompson described this God as the Hound of Heaven!

These words came out of the head and heart of Rev. Rebecca Taylor, Pastor, not through the use of AI