Jesus told them this parable: “Suppose someone among you had one hundred sheep and lost one of them. Wouldn’t he leave the other ninety-nine in the pasture and search for the lost one until he finds it? And when he finds it, he is thrilled and places it on his shoulders. (Luke 15:3-5, Common English Bible)
“May I have your driver’s license?”
My wife and I had just landed in Nashville for a long weekend. I was there to officiate a wedding, but it was also a nice little getaway for the two of us. We waited for quite a while in the rental car line until finally it was our turn.
“May I have your driver’s license?” the Thrifty representative asked. I pulled out my wallet, which is where I always keep my license and…it wasn’t there. No worries, I thought. I had to pull out my license back at Midway Airport to make my way through the TSA check so surely it was in one of my pockets. I looked in all of them. No license. “Don’t panic,” I told myself. “It must be in my backpack.”
Several minutes later with all my belongings strewn out across the carpeted floor, I realized that, yes, I had lost my license. So we had to make another reservation in my wife’s name and we made our way to the rental car lot and all the while I was racking my brain, trying to figure out where the license could have gone. I called every lost and found at Midway I could think of and they said they’d let me know, but I wasn’t going to hold my breath.
I was able to still have a great weekend though, of course, it still nagged at me and I was little worried that I wouldn’t be able to get back on the plane without a photo ID. Thankfully, my stepmother photocopied my passport and emailed that to me so that plus a very thorough search of my bags gave me the green light to get on the plane.
I got home and ordered a duplicate license online (who knew you could do that? And for only $5?) and flouted the law by driving without a license for a few days. About four days after I got home, however, I received a strange plastic bag in the mail that you can see above. On the bag is an apology from the post office for the damage done to a particular item of mail and when I opened the bag, there was half an envelope with half my name and half my address and a Nashville postmark. Inside this half envelope was–yep–my driver’s license. No note and if there was a return address, it must have been sheared off by some kind of postal machine.
I was struck by many things. The kindness of a Nashville stranger who will forever be anonymous. My sheepish admission that I had just spent a few days silently judging more than a few Nashvillians for not wearing masks. But most of all the fact that somehow this half envelope made it to me. There wasn’t much to go on. My last name. My street name. A ZIP Code. But it was enough for it to find me.
There are numerous times in our lives when we try to hide from God. And times, too, where it seems like we’re the ones doing the seeking and God seems to be doing the hiding. But, in the end, against all odds, we will always be found. God knows us deeply and intimately and nothing can separate us from that Presence.