“…If you return to me and obey my commands, then even if your exiled people are at the farthest horizon, I will gather them from there and bring them to the place I have chosen…”
– NEHEMIAH 1:

I can recall a recent occurrence of that rarest of occasions — a Saturday without sunrise-to-sundown planned activities: no shuttling kids to and from birthday parties, no practices, no finding a lost shinguard, no buying something we didn’t need at Target, no trying to avoid a fast food lunch stop, and no forgetting that it was our turn to bring team snacks. Instead, we loaded our car with no real time constraint for a family outing.

As I got in, I looked at Amanda and said, “Do you have my phone?”

She looked back and said, “I don’t. I haven’t seen it.”

“It doesn’t really matter. We’re all together. Whoever needs to call me can wait,” I said confidently, swelling with a sense of paternal pride about abandoning my digital tether to the world.

Amanda smiled and we drove off.

When we finally arrived at the parking lot, the kids filed out, eager to stretch their legs. Amanda and I followed after them. As I came around to the rear of the car and reached to pull the handle on the tailgate, I saw something on the bumper that gave me pause. It was like a parent discovering that their own child had been unintentionally abandoned in the toy aisle at a department store: where a momentary distraction meets a tight timeline and a shopping list — poof! a kid vanishes and no one notices. With nothing wrong and with no signs of wear, I saw it there — that digital tether to the outside world, that thing I had so self-importantly left behind for the sake of my family — my phone. It was as if it had wandered off to sit on the bumper as a matter of its own will (Incidentally, this is what I tell myself when I lose things). I didn’t hear the phone ask permission to do so, it just did. Bad phone. “The little iPhone that could” had managed to take a ride from our house along busy freeways and side streets for about 15 miles, blissfully unaware that its final digitized transmission was more than imminent.

That phone belongs in the safety of my hands. Phones, in case you were unaware, do not belong on the exterior of cars-in-motion. Shocking, I know. There is a place for a phone — a right place. Yes, this phone did get a little uppity and wander off on its own. While I’d like to punish it — we know it deserves a good talking-to — most importantly, I just want it to be where it belongs.

That is the story of God revealed in the Bible. The Bible is, at minimum, the story of God returning things (people) who have wandered off to those unknowingly precarious places, to their rightful home, to the place where they belong — the place “[He] has chosen.” This week as we continue in our series: FAVOR with KINGS, we’ll align ourselves with that story of finding, recovering, and restoring that which is lost. And somehow, in the midst of it, we’ll get one step closer to living out the lives we were made for — lives of significance.

See you Sunday,

Jeff

P.S.: Each week, I get to meet people who are checking out Mariners MV for the first time. And, those first-timers are always so grateful you’ve invited them. Great job. This Sunday,  after the 5pm service, we’ll have $5/plate tacos along with a few activities on the patio to help us in getting our new service off the ground. It’s so great to see there is now new space available for you to continue to be the warm, inviting church you already are.