Lost Treasures

I was a madman on a hunt this morning. Somewhere in this house was a little something that I couldn’t locate. A small Christmas bag with a $50 Outback gift card. I’m looking forward to the ribeye of course, but more than that, when the gift giver(my mother) asks how I enjoyed it, I really didn’t want to tell her that I lost her gift.

All I knew is that Will put the assortment of gift bags in the car when we left my sister, Wendy’s house last Saturday. Or at least that’s what I was told. So I began by interrogating him under bright lights. He yielded no answers. I checked everywhere I knew to look. Do you know how many small Christmas gift bags are sitting around? I woke up my daughters at 11:15am. They had no clue.

Sandra said that everyone went though the bags earlier in the week and put their stuff away. Not this everyone. But I did check my wallet. At 51 it is remotely possible that I stuck it in there and forgot. But no.

Then Will said that all the bags we brought from Wendy’s were recycled to use for the gifts we wrapped for Sandra to open on Christmas Day. Hmmm. So where are those bags? In a big bag in my office. I rifled through it and lo and behold, I found the little, tiny bag with the Outback gift card. I searched diligently and found it.

Going into a new year we often reflect on the prior year, our lives and set goals. Or maybe we don’t. Maybe we’ve lost our drive, our sense of purpose and just aren’t motivated to think about such things. If you’ve lost your sense of purpose, it’s far more important than a gift card and a correspondingly greater effort should go into finding it.

God determines your purpose and He is where you should start looking. Psalms 57:2 says, “I cry out to God Most High, to God who fulfills his purpose for me.” Hebrews 11:6 says that God rewards those who seek Him. Psalms 139:15-16 says,

“My frame was not hidden from you when I was made in the secret place. When I was woven together in the depths of the earth, your eyes saw my unformed body. All the days ordained for me were written in your book before one of them came to be.”

So God knows His purposes for you, for me. He’s not sitting around scratching his head and wondering, “now what will I do with this one?”

He wants us to seek Him. To draw close to Him. To put effort into this discovery process like a steak dinner is riding on it.

The more we know Him, the more we’ll know ourselves.

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