Lost and Found

I wrote a day or two ago about my Masters Degree being returned to me by a Good Samaritan who found the briefcase in which it was contained lying alongside the road in Missouri.

This is not the first time I've had a miraculous return. [1]

When I was 9 years old, I attended Junior Camp at a Church of God camp ground on the shore of Chautauqua Lake in western New York State. I had received a black KJV zipper Bible as a Christmas gift from my parents just a year or two earlier, and at the end of the week, somehow I returned home without my Bible.

Fast forward a little more than eight years to my freshman year at Anderson College (age 17). How this ever happened, I don't know, but as I was meeting people, a girl said, Your name is Tim Irwin?, and a week or two later she showed up with my long lost Bible. Apparently she had some connection to the camp counselor, who found my Bible, but didn't know how to find me. So eight years later, and 350 miles away from home, I was reunited with my zipper Bible and it's on the shelf next to me as I write (I lost it 41 years ago and it was returned 33 years ago). I gave several Bibles to a Bible drive a few weeks ago, but I couldn't part with that one.

Reminds me of Luke 15. God is really good at finding lost things and lost people.

[1] If you insist, you can probably believe these two events were coincidental, or even lucky. Whether or not one sees the hand of God in such things says a lot more about the person than the event itself. I choose to believe God orchestrated these details to both build my faith and assure me of his extravagant love, because I happen to think God loves me and cares for me more than I can fathom.