I am sure I am not the only one who has ever “misplaced” something and spent lots of time looking for the item we label as lost. I had to for the purpose of this article and my own curiosity to know the difference between something being lost or something being misplaced. The online detailed breakdown for losing something is, “the owner loses possession without intending to do so and has no idea where the item is.” When something is misplaced is when “the owner deliberately puts the item down intending to retrieve it later, but forgets where the item has been placed.”
I had a specific folder that I had used before with information about a 3 day retreat for youth I have been involved with for the past 25 years. I had written in one of the manuals that I thought I had turned back into for someone else to use. It was going to be my turn to need the manual again and the main manual is white with a logo on the front. In my mind this is what I was looking for. I looked and looked and searched and searched with no luck of finding the folder.
Days, weeks, and even months went by and I had still not found the folder I was going to be needing soon. Then one night on my night stand I have several books and folders and I wasn’t looking for the manual I had “lost” but I picked up a plain red folder and just so happened opened it up and looked inside. It was the manual I had been looking for. What was lost or misplaced was now back in my possession. I was relieved yet a bit frustrated that what I had spent so much time looking for when it was just a couple feet from where I sleep every night.
It made me think of how God is always around us but if we are not truly seeking Him He won’t be found. Some may think God is a “certain way,” like me thinking the folder I was looking for was white with a logo, when actually it was a plain solid red folder. When I had finally stopped looking for what I thought it should be like then I found what I was really looking for.
It also reminded me of the story in 1 Kings where Elijah had an encounter with God. Elijah was told to look for God and he soon realized that God was not in the mighty wind, the earthquake, nor the fire, but in a still small voice. We often look for God in the big things they may happen in our life and miss Him in the times he is the closest in the small things going on in our everyday lives.
Take time to be still and recognize when God is possibly the closest to you. Just like the famous poem Footprints in the Sand, Jesus is often carrying us during the tough times of life when we think He is far from us. Jesus too is still looking for the lost. He knows all things, but He is like my red folder. He is close by, but it is not until we realize that we are the one lost that then we can be found.
Acts 17:27, “That they should seek the Lord, and perhaps they might feel their way toward Him and find Him; though He is not far from any one of us.”
~TRS
Rays of Hope 