Lost and Found
I miss hugs… I found intentionality
I miss friends… I found other ways to be with them
I miss large groups… I found the joys of silence
I miss eating out… I found a new love for cooking
I miss traveling… I found comfort at home
I miss being busy… I found rest
I miss my job… I found a passion to step towards my dream
I miss my church body… I saw a church rise up
I miss people… I found Jesus more
I lost and I found
Remember playing the game hide and seek when you were little? I always thought of it as lost and found! Imagine… it’s night outside you and your closest friends are in the front yard. The only light source is are the automatic lights outside the house and the moon. You begin to count as your friends go and hide. 1, 2, 3 ready or not here I come. I am sure once you open your eyes to standing in the middle of a dark front yard, no one around, you would feel pretty lost. The yard displays vast darkness with no sound or signs of life nearby. As you begin to waltz around the yard finding your friends, there are moments when you feel scared, unsure, or feel as though you may never find your friends, or find something lurking in the shadows you weren’t expecting. You begin to search high and low for the normal you once had just minutes early, people around you, and seeing a smile on one’s face. However, you turn the corner to look behind the wall, and your face lights up as you find one of your friends. You are not alone anymore. The joy you feel inside by simply finding one friend surpasses the feeling of being lost as you were seconds earlier.
Who’s to say when things in life are stripped away that we have lost everything? When we are stripped of everything we find the joys in the small things in life. Like finding one friend in hide and seek. When we go back to simple joy, we see Jesus so much more clearly. We begin to focus on Him rather than the world because the world can just as easily fade away, but Jesus is eternal.
2 Corinthians 4:18 “while we look not at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen; for the things which are seen are temporal, but the things which are unseen are eternal.”
In the Gospels, Matthew, Mark, and Luke all mention the same thing “Heaven and earth will pass away, but My words will not pass away.” That is a pretty powerful statement. I read this and imagined sitting in my room and slowly everything begins to disappear. My bed, desk, every picture I own, books, paintings, phone, EVERYTHING. All of a sudden outside is a blank canvas. I am sitting in my room and look down and all that is left is my Bible, and I then look behind me and there is Jesus standing there watching me.
Would you pick up the Bible?
Would you pick up the only eternal thing we have or would you end up sitting there longing for the world to go back as it was, normal?
I sometimes think these last few months have been a little bit about that moment. When our world is shaken up when normal isn’t normal do we pick up our Bible and press into the constant Anchor of Peace?
God desires for us to continue to pick up the Bible when we are walking through the light AND the dark. We need the Word and Jesus on our good days just as much as our bad days. When we pick up the Bible and dive into the word, the everlasting and eternal truth, we have the joy of turning the corner and finding God behind the wall! He isn’t hiding, but if we do not take the time to search for Him we may walk past the wall not knowing He was right there. BUT if we SEARCH, LEAN IN, and LOOK for the Lord in every day we WILL find Him EVERY. SINGLE. TIME.
Isaiah 40:8 “The grass withers, the flower fades, but the word of our God will stand forever.”
Psalms 119:89 “Forever, O Lord, your word is firmly fixed in the heavens.”
These last few months have felt like a constant game of lost and found. Some of us missed graduation, family gatherings, vacations, prom, last spring banquets, or seeing some of our friends. Our plans have changed, and will always continue to change. Although we’ve been walking in the dark yard lost, we have found a friend, Jesus.
We have seen a church rise up in a new way, pressing into the simple joy of community, even virtually. We have seen people experiencing Jesus in their lives from the help of a neighbor or friend. We are watching a resurrection of faith right before our eyes. I don’t know about you, but I feel that we have found Jesus more during this time/game of hide and seek than ever before. It takes us at the moment when our world around us fades and is stripped away to search for comfort, hope, and joy to find God behind the wall we are walking past and have a friend with us walking through the dark! Trust me, He wants to walk through this time with you.
So, Friends, let me leave you with two questions…
Would you pick up the Bible?
And what did you find?
