'SOCK' IT TO ME....

No, all these socks aren't mine. I brought them home from my son's home while they were away for a few days. As a good “house-watcher” for a super-busy family, I add a few “helpful touches” when I go to their house to bring in the mail and check on their pet cat and bunny. Cat is happy if I scoop food into its bowl and “gifts” out of its litter box. Bunny is happy if I reach in his cage, scratch his head, and make sure he has fresh water, enough bunny food, and a quick snack (carrot or celery) from the family refrigerator for a “comfort treat.”

My full-service Mom-Grandma-House-watcher role also extends to sorting baskets of just-washed-and-dried laundry brought up from the basement washer-dryer.  My “rule” when house-tending when they're away is NO going down the steep stairs to the laundry area itself. A fall resulting in a bone-crunch (things you think about as you age) would not be a happy scenario for an all-alone house-checker. But freshly-washed-and-dried laundry, waiting in the living room, is fair game for doing a helpful chore.

This time, as I started in on a full bin of socks, I realized they were still a bit damp. So, I brought them home and hung them on my outdoor clothesline to get “nature's dryer” at work. While doing that, I smiled to think of the colloquial saying, “Sock it to me.” The common meaning is “prove it to me” or “bring it on.” It implies that you're ready for a challenge, or maybe a “course correction” that might not be pleasant but worthy of a kind rebuke to improve your outlook or behavior. Of the latter, Proverbs 17:10 (ESV) observes:

A rebuke goes deeper into a man of understanding than a hundred blows into a fool.

That is to say: consider your response to correction and guidance. Do you bristle with defense of your challenged behavior? Or are you willing to consider a necessary change? Another thought: is the person who is pointing out a “soiled” attitude or behavior, a godly example themselves? Are they reaching out in love and care as opposed to selfish offense?

One more thing about line-pinned laundry (the clean type). When I've hung out laundry on a sunny, breezy day, there's a special sense of inhaled “freshness” when I gather the dried results. I usually pair-up socks when I pin them to the line, saving a step when they're dry and taken down. What if I can't find a “match”? Well, orphans happen in a busy household. That's why they have a special basket for the all-alone socks to hopefully someday reunite with its mate. And maybe there's a lesson here, too, about patience. Or letting-go.

LOST & FOUND

Where could it possibly be? I asked myself in mild panic as I searched for my heirloom watch. My father gave it to me for high school graduation in 1965—a traditional gift in that era. He even had my name and graduation year inscribed on the back. So yes, it was special to me and I'd just recently had $60 of repair service on it. But I couldn't find it. I have about four spots where I put it when I take it off to do dishes or yard work. It was in none.

Could I have possibly (and absentmindedly) tossed it in the trash? I went through the kitchen garbage (which included a broken glass and other “yuck” stuff). I took a “grabber” tool out to the big garbage bin, full of thorny rose clippings, and searched there. Then back inside, on a hunch, to go through my dresser drawers. Third drawer down (my “sock drawer”) I caught a glimpse of silver. There it was.

Apparently I'd stacked my just washed and “rolled/tucked” socks on top of the dresser. (No, I don't gently and lovingly fold and stack socks as though they had personality--like a current “organizer” fad advises.) When I grabbed them to move them to the third drawer, my watch (in its usual place on top) got grabbed with the whole bunch. And there it languished in the darkness.

In my frantic search for the watch I could identify with a lady in one of Jesus' parables in Luke 15. In those days, women wore headbands with coins on them. Brides wore them for their wedding attire, and hung onto them as a “savings account” for dire emergencies. With no welfare checks in those days, those coins were a valuable possession. No wonder she looked carefully, taking an oil lamp to every little dim corner of her house and listening carefully as she swept. It was a big deal when she found it. She didn't have Facebook but she did holler to friends and neighbors to come and celebrate how the lost was found.

By itself it would have been an interesting little domestic story, except for these key words in verse 16: “In the same way, I tell you, there is rejoicing in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner who repents.” Its context is also telling: it's the middle parable of three: the lost sheep, the lost coin, and the lost son. All highlight the amazing truth that God never loses sight of us, even when we go our confused and willfully wrong ways. Both the shepherd and the housewife asked others to “rejoice” when they found their lost items (vv. 6-7, 9-10). The father of the prodigal son threw a party to celebrate his son's repentance and return.

As I have re-read these Bible accounts, I am struck by the term “rejoice.” Yes, I rejoiced to find my lost watch. But have I rejoiced over others' spiritual turnarounds as much as I should? And if they seem to turn back to God, but then return to old God-rejecting habits, have I remained faithful in praying for them? This was Jesus' compelling purpose: “The Son of Man came to seek and to save what was lost” (Luke 19:10). Not lost heirloom watches, but lost souls of infinite value.