One Sunday morning, I was going through the Lost and Found box in the usher’s room at our church to see if I could find someone’s rosary. I didn’t find any rosary, but there was a pair of glasses, a set of keys, one glove, a watch and many other interesting items. And I couldn’t help but to think of that prayer:
“Tony, Tony, turn around. Something’s lost that must be found.”
It’s a prayer to St. Anthony who is the patron saint of lost items.
In today’s Gospel (Luke 15:1-10), Luke writes about the Lost and Found with the parables of the sheep and the coins. In several of his parables, Luke emphasizes repentance as a dramatic redirection of a main character’s mind and purpose.
And that got me thinking: there is a lot that can show up in the lost and found box of our lives, just lying in there unclaimed, while we go about our daily business. For example, we can lose:
Direction – Faith – Faculties – Friends – Focus – Hair – Hope – Heart – Head – Keys – Mind – Mobility – Perspective – Self-Esteem – Respect – Sanity – Teeth – Temper – etc.
Sometimes when we lose something, it’s a good strategy to retrace our steps and find the spot where we lost it. So let’s retrace our steps…
- Where did we mislay our prayer time with God in favor of a crammed calendar?
- Where did we temporarily misplace our compassion for the poor in favor of satisfying our own needs?
- Where did we leave our joy in proclaiming God’s Word through our actions?
- Where did we lose our sense of direction and stray from our God?
- What are we in the danger of losing?
Today, I challenge us to look into the Lost and Found box in our lives and make that dramatic redirection to repent and get us back to where we belong – into the arms of a God who loves us and wants us as his own!
