Missing Car Keys

Have you ever lost something so important that you frantically look everywhere in your house to find it? Like your car keys, or your cell phone, or a remote control? You start looking everywhere, tearing the house apart. You look in the most unlikely places. You look in the garbage can for your car keys. The fridge for the cell phone. In the sock drawer for your remote control. More often than not you find what you are looking for in obvious places. After you find it, you feel ridiculous in that it wasn't the first place you looked. "Hey, my car keys were right in my coat pocket!" Sometimes what you're looking for is right out in the open, and you've passed by it multiple times and didn't see it. "Hey the remote control is right on top of the TV!" or "The cell phone was right on the footstool in the middle of the living room all along!"

People often ask me why I believe in a God that I cannot see. Well, the truth is I do not believe in a God I cannot see, I can in fact see God. No, I don't see a face peering out of the sky reminding me of commandments. I see God in some of the most obvious places that are often overlooked. I even see God in the darkest times of my life.

Two of the worst days of my life were January 27th and 28th of 2004, the day that my brother got into a car accident and the day my father had to make the hardest decision of his life. At about 5:00 or so on the 28th, my dad, along with my mother and myself finally accepted that my 17 year old brother would never make it from his massive head injury and his coma, and we decided that it was time to take him off life support. We said our goodbyes, and shortly after the doctor informed us that my brother had died.

The next few weeks were nothing short of a miracle. After my brother died, we went home, with members of our extended families of both sides. People came together from not only my families church, but the church that Heather and I attended at the time as well. My brother and I both worked at two different stores but for the same grocery chain, and both stores gave food, soda, and deli plates for his visitation and funeral. Family that I haven't seen in years, and some that I haven't seen since, came and stayed for weeks to help us out. Meals were prepared, I swear we didn't cook for a month. I saw agnostics and atheists see the outpouring that the community of Christ made to our family, and admit the presence of God. In the darkest period of my life, in my family, friends, co-workers, and strangers, I saw God.

The months following Brad's death people constantly asked me, especially at work where they knew both of us, how could I believe in God at a time like this. The fact is that I believed in Him before, and have believed in Him since. If He was there in the darkest time in my life, He will be there in the dark times to come, shedding His light on the situation. He will be there for me in the bad, and is also there in the good.

Do you see God? If not, I encourage you to look. You never know, He may be right in front of you. Like your cell phone that you're missing.

Amen.