Wednesday 3rd Week of Easter

Gospel – John 6:35-40

Lost and Found

Papal Mass, Edmonton 2022

My watch stopped working a couple of weeks ago.  Most of you know the watch I’m talking about.  It’s a gold watch gifted to my Dad back in 1972 by Texaco for 25 years of faithful service.  Engraved on the back with his name and date, it has been a family possession for over 50 years, passed on to me after Dad passed away in 2004.  Since then, I have made sure to keep it clean and running, no matter the cost.

So I took it in for cleaning and a new battery.  Simple, right?  Not so much!  A new battery didn’t make any difference.  So it has been in the shop these 2 weeks as they try to get it running.  I got the news on Monday that they just couldn’t get it to run.  So I stopped in the shop to retrieve it and try somewhere else.  No luck – the owner wasn’t there.  So I went back yesterday to try again.  This time he was there and pointed me toward his worktable – here’s your watch!   One slight problem – that was NOT my  watch!!

I was devastated!  And very angry!   I was assured that it was just misplaced and he will call me when it’s found.  As of this morning, I am still waiting!  I can’t begin to express how awful I feel – like I’ve lost a piece of myself/my Dad.  It’s like there’s a hole in my life/my memories and I’m not sure if it will be repaired.  Yes, I know – it’s just a watch, a physical object.  And in the course of human events, it pales in comparison to our faith, our hope for eternal life and God’s love for us.  But it is also a tangible connection for me with my Dad and all my memories of him.

And that’s why this one verse in today;s Gospel resonates so much with me today:

And this is the will of the one who sent me,
that I should not lose anything of what he gave me,
but that I should raise it on the last day.

We all get lost sometimes – we lose our way, we lose sight of what/who’s important and precious, we struggle in the darkness of our own stresses and fears.  But God reminds us today that we are each precious to Him, more precious than any possession, even a watch.  Trust in Him, know that even in the darkness, He will find you, comfort you and bring you back home!  And that is when we will experience joy like no other!

Great Spirit, let me walk in the stillness and always feel Your presence by my side.

PS  Still waiting on the watch!

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Image
  Feast of the Presentation Gospel – Luke 2:22-40 We Are Family Church of St. Joseph, Nazareth 5 extremely short stories to start the day! Once all the people in a village decided to pray for rain. On the day of prayer, all the people gathered, but only one boy came with an umbrella. That is faith. When you throw babies in the air, they laugh because they know you will catch them. That is trust. Every night we go to bed without any assurance of being alive the next morning, but we still set the alarm to wake up. That is hope. We plan big things for tomorrow in spite of zero knowledge of the future. That is confidence. We see the world suffering, but still, we get married and have children. That is love. Faith, hope, love, confidence and trust!   Sounds like a perfect list of values/virtues for a happy family! Today’s Gospel tells us of another family – the Holy Family going up to Jerusalem with the baby Jesus to present Him to the Lord in ...
Read more
Image
  Second Sunday of Easter   Gospel – John 20:19-31 Faith and Family Us Decades ago, when Jaime was maybe 7 or 8 years old, I was having some stomach issues, bad enough to spend some time in the hospital to figure out what was going on.   Finally, one morning, with Jaime and Ginger in the room, the doctor comes rushing in to tell me in these overly blunt words – you have cancer, we will perform surgery today and start you on chemo treatments tomorrow!   After I got over the initial shock, I basically had 2 reactions!   First, how dare you blurt out such a diagnosis with our little daughter in the room without even consulting us beforehand.   How disrespectful! How insensitive!   And secondly, my personal health, or lack thereof, was the last thing on my mind.   All that mattered to me was Ginger and Jaime and how all this would affect them! Some things never change!   Truth be told, after all that stress and worry, his diagnosi...
Read more
Image
Tuesday - Third Week of Easter Gospel – John 6:30-35 Knead to Know Cooking Class Over the past month or so, I gathered together a couple groups of my altar servers for a cooking class!   They learned not only my recipe for zucchini chocolate chip muffins but how to make them from scratch!   And, YES, they took home their finished products, or at least the muffins they didn’t wolf down as soon as they came out of the oven!   It was a fun, wonderful (and messy) experience!   Who knew that cracking eggs and measuring out flour could be so ‘untidy’.   But it brought home the lesson that, in order to get those yummy muffins, it takes time, effort and a heaping cup of patience. And it reminded me not only of their loyal service but those long months of Covid when they missed their Mass ministry.   So from time to time during the pandemic, I stayed in touch with them by dropping off goodie bags filled with chocolate chip cookies, zucchini chocolate ...
Read more