Ring a Ding Ding

The telephone rang about an hour after we returned from my friend’s house where Mom, Mhairi and I had enjoyed coffee and a chat. 

“Have you lost a ring?”

My mother looked at her hand and gasped. Her sapphire ring given to her by Dad several years ago was not on her finger. She’d not noticed it missing until then.

Within an hour, my friend’s husband was at the door, beautiful ring in hand. The hero of the hour. He’d returned from a game of golf and seen the ring lying on the hall rug. 

No doubt it had slipped from her finger as she removed coat or gloves, her fingers smaller in this cold than they are in the heat of Long Beach. 

It could just as easily have slipped off in a restaurant yesterday, or at the wedding venue last week, and been lost to her for good.

Mom and I remembered a few years ago when the diamond slipped out of its setting in my engagement ring while I was visiting her. We had prayed about it and started scouring the house for the stone. Within minutes I saw it lying on the kitchen floor, precariously close to the gap under the fridge door. 

Sometimes we consciously enlist God’s help in finding lost items. Other times he rides point on our lives, putting right things that have gone wrong before we even realize it.

This time, he spared Mom from the anxiety and upset of thinking she’d lost such a precious item of jewellery. 

Jesus told stories about lost things – a sheep, a coin, and a son. In each of these stories, the hero of the hour is God himself, who leaves no stone unturned in seeking to find and save that which is lost. His love drives him on to save what is lost at incredible cost to himself.

I am so grateful, and as we head towards our celebration of Thanksgiving tomorrow (a few days early), one of the autumn leaves on our Thanksgiving tree will no doubt be giving thanks to God for finding what was lost.