April 9, 2022

Buried Treasure

Read 2 Timothy 3:14-17

I’ve been sorting, tossing, and donating from my dad’s house. He had quite a few winter coats that I was glad would get new homes with people who needed them. I searched all the pockets first. One of the coats, in an obscure closet behind the furnace, had an iPhone in an inside pocket. I remembered that my dad had to get a new phone because he lost his. When I told my brother, Charlie, I had found it, he mentioned that my dad had written a devotion about losing it. So – I looked it up. I found it in the 2019 GPUMC Lenten Devotion book. As part of Dad’s devotion, he said, “The loss of the phone was not a big concern – phones are easily replaced…The real loss was the information on the phone.”

As most of you know I recently lost my dad – but he is not easily replaced! But there is also a big loss of information in his head. As I dug through his files and desks, I found pieces of paper here and there with information about where certain pieces of furniture had come from, family lineages and birth and death dates. Bits and pieces contribute to a story, but can’t create the book(s) that could be written from the first-hand account of those who knew the answers to the questions still to be asked. I know Charlie has been putting together the ancestry puzzle – and there are several things written down. I am interested in the furniture and accessories that hold meaning for me and will compile whatever bits and pieces of writings I can find.

This brings me to my main point/or question. Where do we turn when we no longer have first-hand information available to us? (A secondary point is to ask all your questions of the living while they are with you!) Jesus is no longer walking around in the flesh answering our questions. Although his answers then were often no more concise than bits and pieces that had to be sorted out! But the answers are all there in the Bible. Thankfully there were people around who had the sense to write it all down for future generations – us.

Too often, I find myself wishing I could ask something, or know the right thing to do or say, when guidance is right there for the taking – if I would just open my Bible and look!

Dear God, thank you for being there with answers to my questions. Help me to remember to look for them and to recognize them. Amen

Jacki Rumpp