Feel like you've lost something?

​We celebrated Dad’s 80th birthday a couple weeks ago, but his special day kind of got stolen by Talia losing her car keys.  We all had anticipated a nice day sitting on the porch visiting, but we spent half the day looking for these keys.  Some of you may remember a story about me losing my keys while visiting Mom and Dad in Florida, and that was a much bigger ordeal than this, but it reminded us all of that other fiasco. 
 
Talia had brought a baby kitten for the kids to play with, and so after the meal, we got the kitty out and let the kids fight over it, basically.  Poor thing, Laney had it by the neck, and it’s a wonder it’s alive today.  We had quite the task teaching her how to “gently” hold the kitty without it jumping out of your arms.  Then of course, we had the fight of teaching a two-year-old about taking turns and sharing without throwing a fit and scaring the cat……
 
All in all, a good day until the drama began.  Tal was going to take the kitten home, so she looks for her keys and can’t find them.  She KNOWS she had them inside the house, because she had the kitten in a box, and she can remember coming across the yard juggling the cat box and the keys, etc.  We look in all the usual places, then we begin to look in all the not-so-usual places:  Flower arrangements, under the couch, in the yard, around where the cars are parked, in the couch cushions, you name it.  Mom is mortified to find a “nest” of nuts in her living room couch where she believes a mouse had dragged all these nuts and made a little home.  And of course, when you turn over couch cushions, you find all the crumbs and trash of a life that sneaks down through the couch.
 
We look and look and look, then we give up and sit on the porch to visit, and the conversation returns around to where they could be, what she’s going to do, whether she has an extra set (NOT), and we get up and begin to look again.  Dad is not a fan of cats, and Tal had this kitten in the house, sneaking up to nibble on Grandpa’s ear while he’s eating.  He said if she hadn’t brought that sorry cat into the house, she probably wouldn’t have lost her keys.
 
On the last round of looking, Kensley walks right up to a couch we have searched more than once and finds the keys right on the seat of the couch.  They had a blue dealer tag thing on them, so it wasn’t like they were just a key with nothing colored and attention-getting.  Tal was so relieved, honestly, and the rest of us were totally perplexed by the fact we had overlooked them like a hundred times, while they stared us in the face.  By the time the search concluded, the day was gone and Dad’s special day had been usurped by chaos.
 
I want to ask you something.  Do you have that nagging feeling about your life, that somehow you’ve lost something?  Your purpose for being?  Your direction?  Are you searching constantly to fill that hole, to feel like you are fulfilled and moving toward your destiny?  Are you constantly overturning those same couch cushions to find crumbs and nests from previous bad choices and thinking you need to head those same directions again and maybe get a different result?  Do you waste time seeking and searching and never finding what you’re looking for, with a constant nagging feeling that something is just not right?
 
Let me tell you one thing I KNOW for sure:  The answer is right in front of your face.  If you have not sought a relationship with Jesus Christ, you are walking right by the answer to a fulfilled and purposeful life.  Those keys have been reaching out for you again and again and again, and you walk right by, hoping if you get on your stomach and search underneath something else and on a ladder and look higher and higher, you will find what you’re seeking.  But the key to it all is seeking the face of God, asking Him to come into your life and lead and guide you through these pitfalls you face – He is reaching out to you from everywhere you look – please, give Him a chance today…..you can stop searching……