Look What I Found
Yesterday, I had the opportunity to work outside. It was a beautiful, warm day with the sun shining and a nice breeze. It was the perfect day to work out in the yard. Several of us were helping my son, Cameron, with some tree trimming and cleaning out some garden spots. I would have called them flower gardens but there aren’t any flowers in them, just plants. Anyway, they needed cleaned out and spruced up to make the house look better to sell. There was quite a bit of stubborn grass in the garden I worked in. It was really wearing me out. At one point, I was on my knees and pulling on a tuft of grass right along the edge of the garden. As I pulled it up, a little snake slithered out from under it. The red, black, and yellow stripes made me immediately say, “Red on black, friend to Jack. Red on yellow, unlucky fellow.” Thankfully, it was red on black, so it was not a coral snake, it was just a harmless scarlet king snake. It couldn’t have been more than ten inches long, but it was beautifully marked. I reached down and caught it so we all could look at it. We tried to show it to Jordan as she looked out the window, but I don’t think she ever saw it as she was enjoying just looking out at the trees. We put it in a container so we wouldn’t harm it as we kept working. A little while later, Connor saw another one just a few feet from where we caught the first one. It was basically the same size. He caught it and put it in the container with the first one. Throughout the day, we would check on them and a younger helper took a real liking to them and held them a good bit in the afternoon. When we were all done, I released them into a jasmine bush to be free and help keep the bug population down.
Isn’t it fun and exciting when you find something? I know, most of you would not be too excited about finding a snake or two, but you know what I mean. You may find a coin on the ground and pick it up to see what it is and maybe the date on it. You may be walking along the beach and see a shell that catches your eye or even a shark tooth. As you reach down and pick it up, you say, “Look what I found!” Or maybe it’s when you’ve been shopping and find a particular blouse or shirt that you are happy to have found. There is a sense of excitement in finding it and you want to show someone. No matter how old we get, we never lose wanting to share that joy with someone else.
The thought that comes to my mind is: do I still have that excitement and longing to share what I’ve found in Jesus? In Mark 5, we find where Jesus healed a man possessed by demons. When Jesus was leaving, this man wanted to go with Jesus, but Jesus did not let him. Instead, He told the man, “Go home to your own people and tell them how much the Lord has done for you, and how He has had mercy on you.” (Mk. 5:19) The man did just that and everyone was amazed. They knew what he was like before. He shared what Jesus had done for him and everyone could see the change in his life. We have a story to tell that is just as powerful as this man’s. We have been saved from our sins. We have been given eternal life. We have been set free from the worries of this world because we have a Savior that always takes care of us. We have hope, peace, joy, and love, and it has all been found in Jesus.
May the Holy Spirit remind us all what we’ve been given and restore the excitement in our hearts that we felt for the first time when we were saved. And let’s go out into our own people and say, “Look what I found!”
Bro. Paul Reed
Tuesday, March 16, 2021