‘What is the price of five sparrows – two copper coins? Yet God does not forget a single one of them. And the very hairs on your head are numbered. So don’t be afraid; you are more valuable to God than a whole flock of sparrows.’ – Luke 12:6-7 NLT
It was a beautiful day, and so my wife and I decided to take the kids to Six Flags. Earlier in the year, we had bought a season pass, as our vacation plans for the summer were ‘staycations’ and we figured it might help to have an amusement park to escape to once in a while. On this day, our destination was the safari. We love animals, and so we had a fun time driving through herds of buffalo, flocks of ostriches, prides of lions, ambushes of tigers, towers of giraffes, parades of elephants, and troops of baboons (yeah, I love the different words used for animal groupings).
It was a light day at the safari, so we managed to get through it faster than expected. With extra time on our hands, the kids asked if we could go into the amusement park. Since we had passes, we said, ‘why not?’ and headed into the park to extend the day’s adventure.
We rode two coasters and were starting our third when my wife realized she did not have my daughter’s phone. She had placed it in her pocket to keep it safe on the previous coaster, but it was no longer there. Panic set in for my 15 year old daughter Kaeleigh. Being fifteen, you might say her response was due to the somewhat unhealthy fixation teenagers have on their smart phones, but in her case, it wasn’t about the phone, any more than a home destroyed by fire is about lost wood, appliances, and shingles. Kaeleigh’s phone held her memories: images of fun times with friends and family; cherished photos of herself with Mom Mom, Pop Pop, and her dog Corky, all three of whom passed away in recent years. What if these treasures were lost? So much of her memory, so much of her history, would be lost forever.
We raced back to the previous coaster and asked the attendant, ‘Has anyone found and turned in a phone?’ No. So much for the hope it had simply fallen out onto the seat. It had certainly bounced out of the car and fell to a crunching death at the base of the all-metal roller coaster. We would have to fill out a lost item report with the park and hope that they found what was left of it when they checked things out later that night. The best we could hope for was the SIM card. I tried to explain to Kaeleigh that it was likely her phone was backed up, but she wasn’t so sure. She couldn’t even remember her password to login to the cloud. All we could do was make the report and pray for the best.
My daughter was beside herself. My wife blamed herself. My son, well, you know how little brothers can be, which started a fight, which escalated, which utterly destroyed what had at one point been a wonderful day. I too fell into the pit of despair. Things like this always happen to us. Our vacations are almost always marked by some ruinous event: a rock going through a car window, one of us (or all of us) getting massively sick, record breaking rainfalls, a kidney stone at Christmas. All in all, we have much to be thankful for, after all, we are all alive, but if you know us, you know this to be true: our best laid plans almost always go awry. There is always something, just enough, to darken even our brightest holidays. Ralphie Parker could have been talking about my family (maybe yours too) when he said, ‘Oh, life is like that. Sometimes, at the height of our revelries, when our joy is at its zenith, when all is most right with the world, the most unthinkable disasters descend upon us.’
Alright, maybe it wasn’t as bad as all that. There are much worse problems than a lost smart phone. But still. It sucked.
And so began the lesson.
On the drive home, my daughter said, ‘at least I don’t live in Maui.’ Her attitude began to change, and hope arose that maybe her phone would be backed up. Because the phone was lost, however, we would need to go to the Apple store to find out. And so, the next day, my wife and daughter went to the local Temple of Steve Jobs to see what could be done. The hope was that the workers could get us into the cloud, where things would be backed up, and we could transfer the data to a new phone. We had by this time given up on the retrieving the old phone entirely. It was past noon, and we hadn’t heard anything from the park. It would cost us, but at least, maybe, just maybe, the wizards of Apple could retrieve her account. But who knew?
I sat in my office, working, still despairing over the possibility that my daughter would be crushed again, praying that he would care enough about her to prevent that, when my wife called.
She explained that just as she pulled into the Apple store parking lot, Six Flags called. They had found the phone. In perfect condition. Somehow, it had survived the fall through multiple layers of crisscrossed metal onto a hard floor beneath with nary a scratch.
God had cared about my daughter’s loss. He had understood. He had protected her heart.
But that’s not the whole of the story.
My wife and daughter drove to the park, where my wife told the woman at the Lost and Found, ‘God is good.’ The woman replied that he most certainly was, and then shared her own story of loss and recovery. She had been in a terrible car accident a couple of years before. An oncoming driver had fallen asleep behind the wheel and hit her head on. The engine of her car was literally driven into her face. One side of her face went one way, the other side the other way. Her injuries were so severe the doctors gave her no hope that she would ever walk, talk, or even move much, again. After lying in a hospital bed for months, tired of being dependent on everyone for everything, of having to push buttons to summon help for the most basic of tasks, she cried out to God. She felt his presence promising to help her. And so began a long rehabilitation that defied the doctors’ predictions. There she was before my wife and daughter, talking, walking, working, and whole, giving the glory to God, and explaining that she had promised to tell everyone she met what he had done for her. For God was, indeed, as my wife had said in response to the recovery of a mere phone, good.
We repented of our despair. Of the sense that everything goes wrong for us. Nothing went wrong for us that day at Six Flags. Everything had gone right. It is the prayer of my heart, every day, that God will reveal himself to my children, that he will show them just how good he is, that he will bring people into their lives to testify convincingly of his goodness and glory, that he will care for them, even as he cares for the sparrows. Why, I had asked in despair that day, did he allow our day to go south? Answer: he was answering my prayer. God wanted to show my daughter, and all of us, that he pays attention to small things like phones when their loss affects the hearts of his children, and, more importantly, that he cares about big things too. That day, we, and my daughter especially, had a front row seat to the wonder of the God who cares for his children, in big and small things.
The next time something goes wrong on a fun day, or even a not so fun day, I hope I remember that. I hope I remember that the God who cares for the sparrows, who numbers even the hairs on our heads, is always watching over us, always working for the good of those who love him.
Under Christ’s Mercy,
Brent