Have you ever lost your keys? Several years ago, while we still had all our kids at home, I lost my keys. Of course, the thing about losing your keys is that you don’t know it until you’re about to be late. In her book, Liturgy of the Ordinary: Sacred Practices for Everyday Life, Tish Warren talks about the Stages of Searching for Lost Objects[1] that I went through that day:
“Stage 1. Logic. I retrace my steps. I look in the places that make sense…This is not that big a deal. They’ll turn up.” So I started where the keys are supposed to go, in the kitchen by the phone with the other keys. Nope! I’m not happy, but there’s still time.
“Stage 2. Self-condemnation.” Now I’m starting to get worried about the time. As I start moving through each room in the house, checking out every horizontal surface, I start in on myself, like Tish: “I am such an idiot. Where did I put those keys? Why am I such an idiot?”
“Stage 3. Vexation.” I start getting really irritated, sometimes with myself and sometimes with others. I’m trying to figure out how this could have happened. Was it the dog? My wife? The kids? And God, what are you going to do about this?
“Stage 4. Desperation.” I’ve looked in all the places the keys were likely to be, and now I start looking in random places where they aren’t likely to be—between the couch cushions, under the bed, in the freezer—don’t laugh it could be there—and the places I’ve already checked three times.
“Stage 5. Last-ditch.” I stop and try praying, but I’m starting to get really upset and I’m having trouble calming down enough to really pray. “Please God!” I pray. “You know I need these keys. You know I need to get to work and to this funeral. You want these people taken care of, right? So could I get a little help here?”
“Stage 6. Despair.” Finally, I sit down on the couch and put my head in my hands. Nothing is working. I’m never going to find my keys. I am a complete failure and I’ll lose my job and then what? And God, how could you let me down like this? Tish writes, “Outside the window, by my locked car, are naked trees and hopping sparrows, but I will not notice. Everything is worthless. … Stupid keys. Stupid me. … Stupid universe….Then, a bit ashamed and guilty about my overreaction, I pull myself together and, beginning at [stage] one, repeat the cycle.” At last, I find my keys in a place I swear I looked before, and I shout with joy! Then I’m out the door like a wild man and remind myself to stay safe while I am driving so my morning doesn’t get even worse. In the scheme of my whole day, this turned out to be just a blip on the radar, something almost forgettable, but as Warren says, “it was also the apocalypse. Apocalypse literally means an unveiling or uncovering.” In all my emotionally dramatic responses, “I glimpsed…how tightly I cling to control and how little control I actually have. And in the absence of control…”[2] I realize how much that episode revealed the dark sides of me as a person. It’s only later that I have the time to reflect on where God was in all of this.
The first thing I realize is that God was with me all along. When my life is coming unglued, I sometimes ask, “Where are you, God?” I sometimes wonder if it’s easier to trust God when it’s about the big things—like the time years ago, when Cynthia was away and our basement flooded with sewage, and I just had to do what I could and lean into God’s strength while I was doing it. ‘Cause where else am I going to go? Or when my mom died and all I felt was great sadness and exhaustion—still I knew that God was at work, ‘cause all I could do was trust God to work. In some strange way, finding a faithful path is easier with the big things than losing my keys, or being hangry because I didn’t eat when I was hungry, or a numbskull driver cuts me off. Is it harder to find faith in the small irritations and failures? But whether my problems are big or small, I realize Jesus comes to me in the messiness of my life—when I’m frustrated or despairing is when Jesus is right there! Whether we are aware of it or not, God is always with us.
The second thing I realize is that if God is there, and God loves me, and God is in charge—then really, what was all the fuss about? How often am I like Martha in our passage from Luke for today, thinking Jesus should make my life different, tell so and so to help me, cater to my whims. I love Jesus’ response: “Martha, Martha, you are worried and distracted by many things; only one thing is needful.” What is that one thing? In that story, Mary is doing it: she is sitting at Jesus’ feet, listening to what he has to say. So when my keys were lost, was I sitting there listening to what Jesus had to say? Nope! I had people to blame and emotions to dramatize when only one thing was needful. At the end of the day, what I knew was if I had spent more time listening to the voice of God in my life, and given less time to the increasingly panicked voices of my worry and fear, I might have found my keys sooner. But for sure, I wouldn’t have been so grouchy or anxious the rest of the day. When we live in light of God’s love, then we can more easily set aside stress and worry, and gain more of God’s perspective.
Knowing that Jesus was there all along—but I didn’t trust Him—knowing that I didn’t have to get so bent out of shape—but I didn’t listen—I realize the third thing, that my carefully crafted self—that I know what I’m doing, that I’m good at what I do, that I’m a man of God—has a whole lot of cracks in it. Yep, actually I think it’s more cracks than anything else. So many ways I fail to be the person I want to be. So many ways I turn out to be a very broken and needy person. I stand in need, and so I lay all my brokenness, all these cracks in my life before God. And miraculously, it’s through these cracks that God wants grace to come into my life and yours. I don’t get why that is, but God comes into that messy moment of vulnerability. In Christian circles, we call this confession. So I not only tell the truth and express my brokenness, but I also ask for help. I don’t want to be like this! “Lord, I want more of You to shine through. When I’m pulling my hair out, I want more of your peace and perspective.” So I wait in that messy moment, the vulnerable moment between my confession and what will come next—and that’s when Jesus comes and brings His grace and peace. Grace for me to hear I’m forgiven and loved. Peace that I don’t have to be in control and that God is at work. Acknowledging our failings and our needs before God brings grace and peace.
So I don’t know if you lost your keys this week, or something just as bad, or maybe you are facing much bigger things. What I know is, as Warren writes, that
“this practice of confession and [forgiveness] must find its way into the small moments of sinfulness in my day. When it does, the gospel—grace itself—seeps into my day, and these moments are transformed. They’re no longer meaningless interruptions, sheer failure and lostness and brokenness. Instead, they’re moments of redemption and remembering, moments to grow bit by bit in trusting Jesus’ work on my behalf. Over time, through the daily practices of confession and [forgiveness], I learn to look for God in the cracks of my day, to notice what these moments of failure reveal about who I am—my false hopes and false gods. I learn to invite the true God into the reality of my lostness and brokenness, to agree with him about my sin and to hear again his words of blessing, acceptance, and love.”[3]
I learn, like Paul, that I can be content in all things, because as Paul says, “I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me.”
[1]Tish Harrison Warren, Liturgy of the Ordinary: Sacred Practices for Everyday Life (Downer’s Grove, IL: Inter-Varsity Press, 2016), pp. 51–52. Tish tells the story of losing her keys, with these stages. I really like her Stages of Searching for Lost Objects, but the story of lost keys that I tell is my own.
[2]Ibid., p. 52.
[3]Ibid., pp. 59–60.