Sunday morning, September 20, 2020; a day of rejoicing…a time of reflecting. It seems that one of my most-treasured reference books had come up missing. Gone. If I had made one trip through my bookshelves, computer bags, and back seats of my cars, I had made twenty. How could I have been so careless with such a valuable resource?!
Oh, it’s not like other things had not managed to get in the way of why I would have misplaced the book. Diagrams and invoices for new technology equipment; cameras, tripods, mixer boards, and projectors taking up space that had once been relatively open; not to mention a little more hand sanitizer than usual…all signs of rising and falling priorities.
I’m not completely sure if it was my 8th or 28th trip through my bookshelf, but there it was, where it had always been. It was exactly where I had last placed it! My heart rejoiced with exceeding gladness; and then I reflected.
Here are those reflections:
- I didn’t recognize my book because I had remembered it as having a different colored binding. Sometimes we have a hard time finding our way back to our first love for God’s ways because we remember it looking differently. Remembering things as we wished they would have been can often trip us up in our search for how things really were and need to be.
- Simply put, I gave up too easily. After about my fourth trip through the bookcase, I decided that the book was not there. How often do we simply decide to give up on making our way back to God? We need to remember this: we are only one attempt away from being back to the full joy we once knew.
- The book was in the very location it was normally placed. I was the one who thought I needed to look in other places. I was the one who came up with all the scenarios as to why it would be somewhere else. Sound familiar? All too often, we create scenarios that simply lead us away from where we should be in the first place. Enough said.
Sunday morning, September 20, 2020…my day of rejoicing; the day I found what I thought was gone. That was the day I went back to the very place I needed to look all along. That was the day I found what I was truly seeking. When will that day come for you?
Blessings,
Pastor David