What Was Lost Is Found

Boxes, boxes, boxes.  It seems that I have spent the last two months surrounded by boxes!  We have at least come to the point where most, though certainly not all, of the boxes have been emptied.  The boxes are now either in the garage or in Al's office, which unfortunately is not yet completely unpacked.

For the last week or so, I have been very frustrated because I couldn't find our plates.  All the other dishes were unpacked.  Cups, saucers, cereal bowls, salad plates - all these had found a home in the kitchen.  But the dinner plates were nowhere to be found.  I had unpacked every box labeled "dishes", but still had not found the dinner plates!  It was quite a mystery.

There was one dish carton, partially unpacked, in the garage.  I had emptied out about half of this carton, until I came to a set of Christmas dishes, and at that point I stopped unpacking that box.  I was more concerned with things we would use every day than with things we might, at most, use once a year.  That box has been sitting in the garage for several weeks, being ignored because I saw no reason to expend energy unpacking Christmas dishes in May.  And I felt certain that I would not have put the everyday dishes at the bottom of the box and packed Christmas dishes on top of them.

How wrong I was!  Yesterday, in the midst of my frustration, I decided to check that box one more time.  I emptied out all the Christmas dishes, and guess what I found?  Yes, there they were.  The missing dinner plates had been packed at the bottom of that carton. 

I have no explanation for why I would have packed that carton that way.  It makes no sense.  I must have been having a backwards moment on the day that box was packed!  In any event, the dishes were lost in the garage!  But now what was lost has been found.  For several weeks, I have wondered what happened to those plates.  I have looked everywhere.  Everywhere, except in the right box!  I have walked around that box numerous times without having any idea the missing plates were right there.

When I found the missing plates yesterday, the plates that were lost right here in the house, I was reminded of an incident in the Old Testament book of 2 Kings.

Josiah had become king.  He was, by the way, eight years old when he became king.  We're told in 2 Kings 22:2 that "he did right in the sight of the LORD and walked in all the way of his father David, [and he did not] turn aside to the right or to the left."

One of the things that marked Josiah's reign was that he called for repairs to the house of the Lord.  The kings before him had not been good kings, and they had "done evil in the sight of the LORD," and the house of the Lord was in a state of disrepair.

As the work was being done, Hilkiah the high priest said, "I have found the book of the law in the house of the Lord."  (2 Kings 22:8 NASB)

Just as my plates were lost in my house, the book of the law of the Lord was lost in the house of the Lord.

What a tragedy!  The law of the Lord was lost in the house of the Lord!

How my heart breaks when I observe the condition of the world around me.  Even though we have not lost the book, we in our culture appear to have lost the law of the Lord.  We have access to the Book, to multiple copies of the Book.  But how much attention are we giving it?

Many, perhaps most, in our culture are walking around the Book in much the same way as I walked around the box containing my plates.  Seeing it, yet unaware of its contents.

Oh, that we might return to the Book!   Oh, that there might be a turning back to the Lord in our day as there was in Josiah's day.

Will you pray with me that we might see revival in our land?


"[Josiah] stood by the pillar and made a covenant before the LORD, to walk after the LORD, and to keep His commandments and His testimonies and His statutes with all his heart and all his soul, to carry out the words of this covenant that were written in this book.  And all the people entered into the covenant."  (2 Kings 23:3 NASB)