Those who know me know I’m technologically challenged.  I remember the day our Associate Pastor, Kristin Gerner Vaughn, showed me a flash drive.  Having just bought a new carrier for all those floppy drives I still had (and not wondering one bit about why its price had been drastically reduced :-), that tiny bit of plastic and metal seemed a miracle to me.  So much information on/in an object that fit on a key chain?  Wow.

It took a while, but I finally bought a flashdrive.  And loved using it.  All my sermons in one place!  All the scripts for all the worship services!  All the letters of recommendations I’ve written!  All the lyrics to all the songs I’ve written, sung, or want to sing!  Addresses for family and friends!  So many items on so tiny a gizmo!  Brilliant.  Just brilliant.

Until that one tiny gizmo got lost.

That’s what happened last June.  June 8, to be exact.  Aware that so many hours of my life were contained on that one flashdrive, my concern with its location had become an obsession….which is why it surprised me when it went missing.  I rarely left it out of my sight!  I had even bought a special tiny glass in which to store it in my desk at home.  How could it just disappear?

I looked for it—all over the house, in my book bag, in the car, in my office at church.  It.  Was.  Nowhere.  How helpless I felt!  What terror attended the recognition that so much work was simply gone. 

After about a month, I reminded myself of the Buddhist concept of detachment, and let the flashdrive go.  If it was gone, it was gone.  Yes, I’d lost a lot of work, but I’d just have to write new sermons, songs, and letters.  This might sound strange, but I actually grieved.

Then, yesterday—NOVEMBER 6!—I found it.  I found my flashdrive!  It was in the wooden container where I keep paperclips and pens on my desk at church.  I couldn’t believe it!  My flashdrive!  I have no idea how it ended up there.  (Allen said the bigger miracle is that I haven’t needed a paperclip for five months…)  Don’t care, really.  I have found my flashdrive!  Like the woman in Jesus’ parable who searches her house high and low for her lost coin, then is so happy when she finds it she throws a party, I nearly threw one yesterday.  My flashdrive has been found!

Today I am grateful to have my flashdrive safely stashed in its rightful place in my desk drawer.  (I’m also grateful for friends who have introduced me to Dropbox!)  What I’m most grateful for, though, is the reminder that, as happy as I was yesterday to find that which was lost, God feels that way every time I come home from my spiritual wanderings.  What a difference believing in God’s love for me has made in my life!

Amazing grace, how sweet the sound!  That saved a soul like me!

I once was lost, but now I’m found; was blind, but now I see!