What Was Lost

 Two weeks ago, when I was taking my walk, I found a cell phone on the ground on the side of our road. I picked it up and quickly discovered that it was locked. I looked up and down the road as if the person who dropped it would still be in sight. I debated a moment, then decided I needed to take it home, get it out of the elements, and try to track down its owner.

I called or texted the people I know who live along our road, but it didn’t belong to any of them. I called the local radio station and asked that they put it on the air. Later that day, when I hadn’t gotten any response, I posted it on my Facebook page.

I thought about turning it in to the sheriff’s department but figured they must have better things to do. Then I remembered what a crime-ridden county I live in – not.

Anyway, I left the phone on the dining room table and went to bed that night, hoping it would somehow find its way home.

Hubby and I never set an alarm to wake us up in the morning. We both have pretty accurate clocks in our heads. If I have to be up at a specific time, I tell myself to wake myself up at that time, and it works 95% of the time. My one and only superpower.

And on the off chance my brain didn’t listen to me the night before, we have an annoying cat who wakes us up crying and walking over our heads around four every morning, 365 days of the year.

For some reason, for the first time in her three years of life, she didn’t wake us up the next day. Instead, at five a.m., we were awakened by music coming from the dining room. The alarm on the lost cellphone was going off!

What were the chances the one morning that our brains fail us, the cat sleeps in, and Hubby needs to get up at five for work, that someone else’s alarm wakes us up?

The following morning, I still had the phone, and its alarm still went off at five a.m. But we had already gotten ourselves out of bed. I did, however, feel bad that somewhere out there was someone who might have slept in two mornings in a row. 

I called our sheriff’s department later that morning. I told them about the phone and that I could drop it off in their lost and found that afternoon. Instead, a friendly officer came by our house ten minutes later and picked it up. He seemed confident that they could find its home, even though the battery was dead by then.

“Or take another illustration: A woman has ten valuable silver coins and loses one. Won’t she light a lamp and look in every corner of the house and sweep every nook and cranny until she finds it? And then won’t she call in her friends and neighbors to rejoice with her? In the same way there is joy in the presence of the angels of God when one sinner repents.” (Luke 15:8-10, Living Bible)

I hope whoever lost that cell phone had it returned, and he or she was able to rejoice.