I’d been searching the house  for half an hour but  couldn’t find the rewiring instructions for the television’s amplifier – just back from the repair shop in Boise. Dan and I had carefully  written down  how the jumble of wires from the tv was to reconnect. “Where did you put it,”  my beloved asked for the 10^th time  “Did you stick it in your journal?”  “If I knew where and how,”  I grumbled under my breath, “I’d  get it !”

You know how it is when you lose , misplace or just plain can’t find something important.  There’s an inverse law that kicks in for lost things:  the harder you search, trying to remember  “now where could it be”, the more stubbornly elusive it remains. So I stopped, took a deep breath and prayed: “Lord, please help me find the paper. You know exactly where it is but I do not. Thank You Lord for this small favor.”

As I came down the stairs,  Dan hollered, ”I found it!”  He held out a yellow legal pad and the lost instructions which he’d  written down and taken into his less than tidy law office . (No Comment!)  We were both relieved and I had to stifle a giggle.  This was not the first time God answered my prayer to find something. Not too long ago after a walk I lost my brand new phone. I retraced my steps but the phone was gone. My prayer was more tearful than eloquent as I thought about  the expense and hassle of getting another phone.  “Please, God help me to find it.”

Suddenly,  I had a mental picture of the phone under my bed, ran inside and sure enough, there it was where it had fallen out of my pocket.  Praise God! There have been other incidents:  a ring fallen into the library’s trash can; pearl earrings in a department store; my last phone in a bathroom stall.  No one will convince  me that these are coincidences. I believe  God speaks personally in this way  because too often  I am a skeptic and second guess God’s ways. He helps me find lost things because I simply cannot on my own power. And He likes to prove Himself in all of our prayers, the great and the small. I call Him, God of Lost Things,

You see there’s more to the story. We’ve had a week of family crises, of a loved one gone missing in Colorado and another one spiraling into darkness. Yes,  I  called other prayer warriors  for help in prayer. It took a while but God found the one and put her safely in jail.   Then at the exact time Dan and I found the legal pad, we got a call from Tennessee. The other lost sheep was rescued and in a hospital.

Jesus often talked and taught about “the lost”  in  His parables: the lost sheep, the lost coin, the lost son. Each time it was to show how valuable we are to God  our Father who never loses sight of us.  His eye is on the sparrow and on rests on us. He knows the number of hairs on our heads and the exact  days of our lives. Luke 10:19   summarizes the sole purpose of Jesus’ ministry:

            For the Son of Man came to seek and to save the lost.”

In His magnificent intercessory prayer  Jesus prays that

            …while I was with them, I was keeping them in Your name which You have given Me; and I guarded them and not one of them perished but the son of perdition, so that the Scripture would be fulfilled. John 17:12

I am pleasantly surprised and overjoyed when the Lord helps me find  valuables.   But how much greater is  my gratitude to Him Who found me. For once I was lost in darkness and despair but  Jesus went after me even to the cross.  I’ve never gotten over that experience. 

Surely the same God who gives me a mental picture of  lost valuables will spotlight loved  ones who go missing.  So, God of Lost Things, help this dark, lost world and us who live here find whatever we have misplaced. I pray through Jesus we seek out our lost children, hopes, dreams and courage and have faith that they will be found  in You.  There is no darkness  or loss so great Your Light cannot shine into  their hiding places.