Last month, Dash and I had the privilege of visiting the state of Virginia with some dear friends from our church, who graciously shared their timeshare unit with our family. Our daughter and their daughters are so close that they could be sisters,

Of course, this isn’t a blog post about how amazing everything was - that would be waaaaay to easy. As I got out of the car after 12 hours of driving, I distinctly remember NOT remembering my keys. “No problem”, I thought, “I’ll grab them when I come back to move the luggage”.

I didn’t grab them when I moved the luggage. Bad idea.

The next day, I looked in the car, and I couldn’t find the keys. “No problem”, I thought, “I must have brought them into the condo after all”.

I couldn’t find them in the condo.

After a couple of days of quiet searching, I was starting to become visibly annoyed by the fact that I couldn’t find my keys. We had another car key (way to go, Dash!), but I was nervous about leaving to go home without having found my keys.

Things boiled over on our way to a hike on a local mountain, and without going into too many details, I had to apologize to Dash and the family for getting angry about having lost keys.

About an hour later, I found the keys under a dresser in our hotel room.

Maybe it’s a little bit obvious, but I was quite happy that I found my keys. I showed everyone that I could find, I told the friends we were staying with - pretty much the only thing I didn’t do was call my mother.

Maybe it’s a little obvious, but this whole situation reminded me a lot of a parable that the Lord Jesus shared with the crowds that were following Him:

I don’t know if there was joy before the angels of God when I found my keys, but I do know what its like to find joy when a sinner repents and follows Jesus. It is one of the happiest moments at Beacon - whether I’m in the camp office, at a staff meeting, or talking to a cabin leader walking to the beach, there is a very real feeling of joy and pride knowing that God has chosen to add to His Kingdom using our little camp.

Sometimes, it takes real life situations to help me understand the parables that Jesus taught. I don’t always connect immediately with stories about seeds or denarii. I do connect with losing my keys. Perhaps a challenge for you to over the next little while is to find a life situation that you can connect to a parable or two - the beginnings of an excellent way to share the Gospel with friends or family!