PARABLE OF THE LOST BOOK

In the beginning, the elohim created skies and earth.

Welcome back. Let's think about loving what is lost.

There was a teacher who possessed many books. He loved each and every one. He wanted to read them all more than once.

He began reading a classic that was more than a thousand pages long. After several nights in bed, he read over three hundred pages.

One day, he decided that he loved the book so much that he would take it with him.

He read in his car while he waited for red lights to turn green. He read at the school where he worked. He read during lunch. He read in the post office while he waited to buy stamps.

When he went to bed that night, he discovered that his book was lost. This was quite distressing, but not too much since he probably left it in his car.

After he woke up the next day, the teacher searched his car, but it was not there. He searched all the rooms where he worked, but it was not there either.

His heart sank. With little hope he searched his car again to no avail. The weekend came and went. For two days he was without his book.

The teacher did not want to start reading another one. He wanted to finish the book he had lost. If he did not find it, then he would have to buy another copy.

However, he had already drawn the book into his heart by underlining words to savor, highlighting passages to ponder, and scribbling marginalia to converse within its many pages.

 As luck would have it, during his Monday morning drive to work, the teacher remembered his visit to the post office. So on his lunch break, he drove there to see if he had left it there.

On the way, he nearly talked himself into not bothering. It had been two days since he last visited. No one would remember him.

As he stood in a long line, the teacher watched two postal employees working behind a counter with six empty stations. One of workers was a man who had sold a book of stamps to the teacher.

It would be a long wait. He had no book to read. So he began looking around in case someone set it out on a counter.

The one thing the teacher had going for him was that he lived in a culture that would sell a mediocre book for twenty-five dollars and a classic for five. If his book were set out so anyone could take it, the odds were good that the book's thickness and classic sounding title might discourage them.

Minutes passed. He did not see his book anywhere. Another postal worker joined the other two. The queue dwindled a little faster.

Suddenly, a man standing in line began to complain about how slow the post office workers were. He grumbled that he paid too much in taxes for lousy service.

He was a short man with a wreath of brown hair that wrapped around his bald head from ear to ear. He looked around smugly at the other people standing in line as if he expected words or nods of approval. 

Only the teacher spoke. The teacher told him that he was being rude. He said that he might deliver his own mail if he did not like paying taxes.

The teacher said, "Don’t want to deliver your own mail?  Then you might vote for candidates who will fund the U.S. Postal Service so they can afford to hire more people to handle the mail."  

No one else said a word. Everyone in line looked at the man to see what he would say.

He did not disappoint them with silence. He said, "If you like paying taxes so much, why don't you give them an extra ten dollars."

The teacher said, "I am not here to make a purchase or drop off any mail. I might have left my copy of Les Miserables here last Friday, and I want it back."

The postal worker who had sold the teacher his stamps said, "Is it a big gray book?"

"Yes, sir."

"I called out to you when you left it, but you were out the door too fast. I've got it right here."

He turned to open a large, red tool box. The teacher's book was there atop notebooks, magazines, purses, and many other items.

He held it out for the teacher to take.

"Thanks," he said.

“Your welcome.”

As he passed the other workers, the teacher saw they were grinning from ear to ear. Their faces mirrored the delight he felt as he carried what he lost home.

Blessings...