“But our citizenship is in heaven. And we eagerly await a Savior from there, the Lord Jesus Christ…” Philippians 3:20
“How YOU doin’ taday?” was the question. My friend had asked it of me, later in yesterday’s afternoon. A question USUALLY begs an answer, but this question really doesn’t want a ‘thorough’ one. It is more of a greeting than a question. A long explanation is not only not necessary…it is frowned upon. So the customary and acceptable answer came out as, “Fine.” Truth be told…I wasn’t!
Oh don’t get me wrong.. It wasn’t like anything was terribly WRONG. It was just that everything wasn’t wonderfully RIGHT either! It was a day where everything I touched seemed to go wrong. From laying down my keys and not remembering where I put them to taking time to sort through thousands of bolts to find 5 correct ones…but finding only 3…at 2 different hardware stores! And then I lost my phone!
The mood meter in my soul was steadily rising from ‘Eeyore the donkey’ to ‘Chicken Little’ as I eagerly searched, retraced my steps, and then called in my wife to help. I had had it at the church… but not at home. The trip home was on my motorcycle. “SURELY I hadn’t laid it on the passenger seat before I had driven home!!!!” I thought. But it was nowhere to be found. Anxiety arose, as what I had taken for granted steadily became my most prized possession! But that is EXACTLY what had happened.
In a last ditch effort I began walking the path I had ridden an hour before…EAGERLY searching and hoping and…there it was! Lying face down ON the road…unbroken! It was like a miracle and I praised God for the gift of NOT getting what I deserved for being so unappreciative and clumsy. My emotions went from panic to supreme joy in an instant! Having lost a phone once in my life, I KNEW what LOST really meant.
I am a found lost person. Which seems like an oxymoron. But it is truth. And I don’t find myself thinking through the consequences of that as often as I should. Being a Believer in Christ, I am mostly hopeful that things should go well. When they don’t, I get rather down about it. My phone episode made me wonder if I have it backwards.
Being a citizen of Heaven is not my typical mindset. I think from where I AM…NOT where I am going to be. Thus, the journey of my spirit, encased in flesh, is an emotional one, as I go from pain to joy to pain again. Paul just gave me a different perspective with 2 words that do not typically go together…and turned them into a goal. “Eagerly await!” It’s a BIG God lesson. Which makes me wonder if HE had anything to do with my phone????
