I lost my cell phone yesterday. I think that is the first time in my life I have lost my phone. Patty loses hers every day, well, at least twice a week. I lecture her continuously, “Have a particular place or places you set it down, and don’t, under any circumstances, set it down any place else. If you travel, the first thing you do is establish that dedicated place for your phone; if you do that, you will never lose your phone.” She obviously has not followed my counsel. Well, yesterday I set my phone on the arm of my recliner, which is one of my dedicated places, but when Roscoe, my dog, jumped up on my lap, he knocked the phone off the arm of my chair without me noticing, and it went down and got caught between the arm and the cushion of my chair. I began backtracking every place I had been the previous couple of hours, checking where I typically put my phone. When I went into our room to check, there Patty had it in her hand, having guessed that it would be somewhere around the last place I used it, which was my chair. I said, “Thank you!” and she said, “You know, if you would put your phone in the same place every time, you wouldn’t lose it.” I can’t wait until the next time she loses hers!

Jesus told a story about a lady who lost a coin. She searches the whole house until she finally finds it, and she gets all excited, telling all her friends she has found her lost coin. There are lost people all around us, and Jesus expects that we will put in at least as much effort to reach them with the gospel as we put into finding a lost cell phone.