The Blackberry, Lew, and the Lost Coin

Or what woman having ten silver coins, if she loses one of them, does not light a lamp, sweep the house, and search carefully until she finds it?

Luke 15:8

It was great! We had just finished breakfast after a great night's sleep following the long, long journey into Ocosingo, and this was first opportunity I had to see whether my blackberry worked. And believe or not, it did! An electronic hand-held device that allows me to retrieve emails from work, make calls through the Cingular network and browse the Internet actually worked in Ocosingo. There are places on the Parkway where this thing will not work, but here in the rural areas on the most-southern state of Mexico, I was connected to work, the Internet, the world! What a world we live in! What wonderful technology we have.

The device I have is about 3 to 4 years old, and because of its full keypad and the lack of other features, I'm told it is now considered obsolete and thus scheduled for repayment within the next 5 or 6 months. That's the nature of technology – short-lived, rapidly declining value, and frequently replaced by the latest and always greatest new device.

While I am enjoying my discovery in the room I am sharing with 5 others, however, Lew is something less than marveled. In the background I notice that several other roommates have joined Lew in a search for his wallet, so I decided I'd join the search too. He explained how he was dressing for Church and simply laid it on his bed, and now it was no where to be seen. Geoff Pagett confirmed the placement on the bed as John Eikenberry and I picked up other items on the bed to check if the wallet had slid between a fold in a shirt or a pair of pants or underneath a shaving kit. At some point Erin Musson joined the search. With 5 of us walking around the room and lifting items, I padded down a pair of pants that Erin had just put back down on the bed to make sure she might not have missed something in her check of the area. The search continued for what must have been 10 minutes, all the while Lew recounting every step and move he could recall making.

Suddenly, Geoff opened the same pair of pants that just minutes before Erin and I had checked and inside one of the rear pockets was the outline of a wallet. We all laughed, and Lew was in disbelief because he swore he had checked those same pants himself. The quick pick ups, the light pads were not enough, only Geoff had bothered to open them to check the pockets.

I was immediately reminded of how the old widow in Luke 15 responds, “When she has found it, she calls together her friends and neighbors, saying, 'Rejoice with me, for I have the coin that I had lost.'” (Luke 15:9) Our laughter, along with Lew's, was indeed our form of rejoicing.

But at that moment I was always reminded of a much larger truth, the fact that despite the thousand of years since its original recording, indeed not a single word of God's truth has been diminished or become obsolete. No need for upgrades or enhancements, God's word is as real, as fresh, as relevant today as when it was first recorded or spoken. My blackberry (a 4-year old device) has become “obsolete” by today's standards within the last year, but yes indeed, as Jesus stated over 2,000 years ago, in Luke 21: 33, the Word of God endures forever.

This event was just the first of many, many others during our week in Mexico in which the Holy Spirit showed me and others that God is still working in the world.

Jeff Gray