It Was In Her Pocket

Yesterday my mother couldn’t find her watch.  She remembered putting it on her bedside table before going to bed the night before.  Now she couldn’t find it.  I joined in the search.  We retraced her steps.  We looked in the bathroom, on the little table by the chair in the den where she most often sits.  No watch was to be found.

She wanted this watch, needed this watch, but it was gone.  Oh wait, no!  At last she found it!  It was in her pocket!  Haven’t we all done this, spending minutes or even hours looking for something we think we’ve lost, only to discover it was near us all the time.

We do the same thing in our spiritual worlds.  We go through some difficulty, a sorrow, feelings of failure, inability to cope with demands of life, despondency.  We want peace, need peace, but it’s gone.  Oh wait, no!  It’s with us always; so near, and yet it seems lost to us.  We look and look but we just can’t find it.

Like my mother and I looking for her watch, you and I can so easily search in all the wrong places, too.  We convince ourselves that peace is lost to us forever, when in reality, it’s so near.  It’s ours for the taking.

We are told that in Matthew 11:28 when Jesus says, “Come to me, all of you who are weary and carry heavy burdens, and I will give you rest.”  We can be our own worst enemy when we believe that we have lost peace and can’t find it, when really, it’s always within our reach because Jesus is always there, waiting, longing to give us all that we need.  We only need to go to Him and take the peace He always offers.   He will give us rest.