This past Saturday Jim and I took our daughter car shopping. She has been saving up for her first car for a long time, and we finally aligned our schedules to check out some possible options. After about five or six hours of shopping, we found ourselves at the last stop of the day. When we arrived, there was an “out to lunch” sign on the door, so we climbed into the car we wanted to see (it had been left unlocked), and we gave it whatever inspection we could without a key. Then we sat on a bench near the front door of the office looking out at the busy road ahead and waiting for the salesperson to arrive. When we’d been there for thirty or forty minutes and still no one appeared, we decided to call it a day.
After the thirty-minute drive home, we grabbed our belongings from the car and headed into the house. It took me all of five seconds to realize something was wrong. My purse was missing. I frantically checked under the car seat, in the back seat, and under the seat again. It was definitely not there. And that was definitely not good.
After making a few phone calls to places we had visited that day, I walked all over the house looking for Jim to tell him I was heading back to Murfreesboro to look for my purse. He was nowhere to be found! I finally found him in our garage, in the car, with the engine running. Without a word of lecture or even a sigh, he was taking me back to hunt for my bag. I climbed in, embarrassed and worried. I asked myself all the questions: Did I leave my purse in a random used car? On the porch next to that bench where everyone would see it and anyone could take it? What had I done?
I prayed out loud asking God to help me find my purse, for all the contents to be there, and for Him to give me mercy.
Finally, after what seemed like an eternity, we arrived at the car lot, and my eyes instantly scanned the front porch of the office. No purse. (And still an “out to lunch” sign on the door, at 3:45 in the afternoon!) I hurried over to the car we had been in and wrenched the back door open. No purse. While I was trying not to panic, Jim opened the front door of the car, and there it was: My purse, lying on the floor of the car, right where I had apparently set it down nearly two hours earlier.
Waves of mercy.
We got in our car to return home again, and I made sure everything was still in my wallet. It was. And I was overwhelmed. Oh, to be the recipient of grace and mercy. I didn’t deserve for the Lord to protect me in that way. And I did deserve for my husband to be upset with me, but he wasn’t.
After thanking God and thanking Jim, I went on to tell Jim that the experience reminded me of the parable of the ungrateful servant I had just read a day or two earlier. (Matthew 18:21-35.) I said, “God spared us from having all our cards and identity stolen, and I need to remember that the next time someone could use a little mercy. He has spared us much today, but I am so quick to get frustrated with others who make less costly mistakes.”
Wouldn’t you know the opportunity to remember this came exactly that same day?!
Our daughter had a friend come over that night to get ready for Halloween, and, long story short, her friend knocked a container of fake blood pigment all over our bathroom, ruining a brand-new bathmat. I discovered her friend in the other bathroom, scrubbing the bathmat furiously in the sink. When I realized what she was doing, and when she realized that she was (quite literally!) caught red-handed, our eyes locked, and I knew: This was my opportunity. I said, “Honey, it’s no big deal. Stop scrubbing. I’ll take care of it.” She looked at me and asked if I was sure, and I knew exactly what she was feeling.
I didn’t intend to lose my purse, but I wasn’t careful, and I deserved whatever might come my way. Our daughter’s friend didn’t intend to make my bathroom look like a horror scene, and a lecture would have been appropriate.
But God.
He has done so much for me. He has done much more than spare my finances; He has spared my very life, and I could never, ever repay Him for what He has done for me. I don’t always remember to be grateful, and I definitely take His mercy for granted sometimes. But God is even merciful in my forgetting. May He continue to lovingly remind me, again and again.
“Have mercy on me, O God, according to your steadfast love; according to your abundant mercy blot out my transgressions.” — Psalm 51:1