Searching

I’ll admit, I freaked out a bit.  Don’t tell my wife, but I thought I lost my wedding ring yesterday!  I made it home early, and since I had some good daylight left  I thought I would do some yard work.  Rake in hand I started piling and bagging up leaves.  Just as I was about done I looked at my watch to see what time it was, and as I did I realized my wedding ring was not on my finger!

I panicked, and started looking all over.  I paced back and forth through the yard, I went back through the leaves I had just bagged up, and even recruited Jack to help me look.  I couldn’t find it anywhere.  After about 30 minutes of intense searching I gave up, and resigned that I was going to have to tell Becky I had lost my wedding ring.

When I came inside, however, to my surprise I found my ring sitting on the office desk!  Apparently I hadn’t even put it on in the morning, and managed to make it through the whole day without noticing I wasn’t wearing it (yes, I know that failing to notice I didn’t have my wedding ring on is probably not much better than actually losing it!).

It is one thing to lose a ring, but there are a lot of people looking for even more important things in life.  Maybe they are missing peace, joy, hope, security or fulfillment.  Whatever it is, they are frantically looking everywhere for it.

The problem is like me looking for my ring, they are looking in the wrong places.  What they are looking for isn’t laying on the ground, it isn’t accidentally bagged up with some leaves, it is not even outside in the yard.  What they are looking for can’t be found in shallow relationships, or in success or fame.  It can only be found in God.

They can search for 30 minutes, or 30 years, outside, but they will never find what they are looking for until they come inside and look on the office desk.