23 Apr 2016
I am notorious for losing things. I do not know what it is about me, but I cannot keep track of anything I own. If you want to lose something and never find it again, simply put it into my trust. I am the king of losing things. My problem is, I do not lose the right things.
Why I am so klutzy in this area is beyond my ability to comprehend. Some of my most treasured items have been lost for all time. Even the other day I lost a lot of time searching for something I could not find. That is the reason I try not to become attached to anything I own.
The Gracious Mistress of the Parsonage has become frustrated many times because of something she gave me and it is now no longer to be found anywhere this side of the blue moon. She has given me lecture after lecture along this line dealing with personal responsibility and as always, I take personal responsibility for losing everything that I have.
What more can I possibly say?
A few things that I have lost I kinda wished I had back. I remember a pocket knife I was quite attached to and headed for quite a while until one day there was nowhere to be found. Believe me, I looked everywhere. Of course, I could not have looked everywhere or I probably would have found it. Why is it that when you lose something you usually find it in the last place you look?
The one question that I ponder more than anything else is, where do things go when they are lost? Is there a particular place where lost things gather and have a party until someone finds them? If there is I would like to know where that place is. Of course, with my luck, that place is lost.
Everything I have lost throughout life I have gotten over. The aforementioned pocket knife, I have replaced at least 27 times. It would be great one day to find all 27 of those lost knives? Then I would march my way to eBay!
I have gotten over just about everything that I have lost and adjusted my life to not having that particular thing. There is one thing, however, that I still have not gotten over.
I am not exactly sure when I lost it, because I did not really use it that much. Oh, once in a while I might have used it, but not very regularly.
The thing I am referring to is my mind. I cannot find out or remember the exact date when I lost my mind. I am not sure where I was when I lost it. Maybe if I knew where I was at when I lost my mind, I could go back and search a little bit and maybe find it.
I know that I had a mind up until I got married. I do remember using my mind up until that point. The thing is, I do not know what happened to my mind after I got married. Where did it go?
Of course the thought is probable that I still have my mind, but I am not using it. It would make sense in a certain regard. But what is my mind doing while I am not using it? Is somebody else using my mind?
For instance. Some people will ask me about something and I usually respond, “Okay, I really don’t mind if you do that.”
Or, “That’s quite all right. I don’t mind at all.”
Of course that has its limit. Someone walked up to me on the street the other day and ask if they could borrow five dollars from me. Then, I did mind. Where my mind came from at that point I will never know, but I am certainly glad it arrived on time.
That brought me to the place of thinking that maybe I have not lost my mind. Maybe my mind is hiding somewhere and only appears in emergencies. If that is the case, I really don’t mind.
I remember the old saying that goes something like, “mind over matter, and if you don’t mind it don’t matter.”
Just the other day my wife said, “Do you mind if we go out for supper tonight?”
Now I was in a dilemma. Where is my mind when I really need it?
I did mind, but I could not find my mind and so all I could say was, “I don’t mind if that is what you want to do.”
Where in the world did that come from? I did mind, but my mind was not available to bail me out of an activity closely linked to my wallet.
I think my mind is hiding somewhere and waiting to have a little bit of fun with me. However, I really don’t mind because if I did mind, I would be in so much trouble and my real mind would be so confused that it probably would never mind again.
Actually, I have not really missed my mind.
The apostle Paul had a different twist to this. He said,” Let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus” (Philippians 2:5).
I may have lost my mind, but my real focus in life is to lose myself in the mind of Christ.
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