Missing Eyeglasses

Yesterday my daughter called and asked if her eyeglasses were still on the dining room table where she left them earlier in the day, when she was visiting here. I remember her distinctly putting them there, so we were both mystified when they showed up missing again from the table.

The first place I looked this time was on Dean's face. (See August 2012 "Connecting the Dots".) He was sporting thin-wired glasses, but they were bifocals, so we deemed him innocent this time. Then I checked the floor under the table and by the computer, but all were empty of anyone's glasses. By now, I was feeling innocent myself. The eyeglasses were evidently somewhere besides my house.

Then this morning as my nephew and I were about to walk out the door by the dining room table to leave for his work, he almost stepped on a pair of wire-framed glasses on the floor. They were invisible, lying on my dark-patterned carpet. It was fortunate that they didn't get crushed underfoot. Somehow they must have gotten knocked off the table and onto the floor, which proved to be a perfect hiding place for them.

God has promised to be a hiding place for us. When we get knocked around by life's trials, when trouble is looking for us, and when the pressures of life are about to crush us, God conceals us protectively amidst the pattern of His will. Seek His will and it will sustain you and lift you up in the end.

Connecting the Dots

Several days ago my daughter asked if she left her wire-rimmed eyeglasses at my house. She seemed to think they were left on my dining room table. I told her I remembered seeing them there, but that they weren't there now, so maybe she left them somewhere else. Of course, I said I'd keep looking for them around the house.

A day or so later, Dean announced that he wasn't wearing his newest prescription glasses. He couldn't find them, so was wearing an old pair he had. This has happened before, so I didn't pay much attention at the time. All his wire-rimmed glasses look about the same to me.

Then last night Dean said he couldn't find even the old pair he was wearing, so I made a search around his recliner, which has a reputation for swallowing up his lost objects. There near it on the floor was a pair of eyeglasses. As I picked them up, they looked familiar. I asked Dean if he was sure they were his, because they looked very similar to Kayla's glasses. Of course, he wasn't sure about anything, even whether he had first found them on the table.

I couldn't hold Dean accountable for "stealing" glasses, but I sure felt like a fool myself for not connecting the dots sooner. Here I had been looking all over for Kayla's glasses, even asking for Dean's assistance, and all along the glasses were right in front of our noses. And literally ON Dean's nose!

How many people search for God all their lives, when He's as close to them as a pair of eyeglasses--sitting majestically right in front of their eyes?

Losing It Twice

I can't believe I lost something twice today. When I first lost my flash drive at home (a small memory device for your computer, no bigger than a small lipstick), it was only after Dean made me stop looking and pray about it that it was found. But then as I left the library, after using the flash drive, I wondered on the way out to the car where I had put it, not imagining that I could possibly have lost it again so soon after all my searching earlier.

It's so easy to lose your way on this Christian walk of ours. You'd think with something as important as our Christianity at stake we wouldn't lose it in the first place. But then we lose our patience, and a little while later we lose our temper. They're almost the same thing. When you lose one, you almost always lose the other.

I think the only solution to any losing problem is prayer. God will show us where to find patience. He'll even help us find our temper. Our sweet, loving one, that is. Thank you, God, for helping us find everything we really need.

P.S. I'd like to show you a picture of that flash drive, but I still haven't found it!!!