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We had a little snow up in the mountains the other day. It piled up deep, was icy, and was made hard by the cold wind of the night. It was a bad day to be out, and the cat refused to even look out of a window. Our cat often gets depressed when it snows. The cold is not a huge problem, but the limited availability of fresh ground makes the cat all jittery or lethargic, the obvious symptoms of what I have self-diagnosed as a bipolar feline. You might remember, this is the cat that has one eye. The cat is supposed to have two eyes and it has one, and one “polar,” and it has two. Of course, the cat does have four paws and one tail, and that counts for something. Cats are pretty strange creatures. Anyway, I digress. The yard was full of snow, the streets were covered over, there was a crisp bite to the air, and the inside of the house was warm. It was a great day to go down to the basement and count the washers. I have cans and cans of every imaginable size of bolts, nuts, washers, lag bolts, carriage bolts, lock washers, wing nuts, lock nuts, galvanized bolts, wood screws, mechanical bolts, set screws, sheet metal screws, stainless steel screws, cotter-keys, sheer pins, roofing nails, glue coat nails, rivets, pop rivets, and a Canadian penny. (I did not know about the Canadian penny until much later in the story, but I list it here just to warn you ahead of time.) Anyway, there was nothing to watch on TV, no way to get to a job, no need to go out and get anything, no need to encourage the cat to go out, since she had an indoor scratching place, and nothing to do, so I went to the basement and counted my hardware.
For the life of me, I do not know how it is that I have so many quarter inch washers. I must have over 400 of them. (Actually, I know that I have 409, since I counted them out and put them on 13 quarter-inch bolts and secured them safe and orderly with 13 nuts). Now they are all organized and counted out. I also organized all of the other hardware I mentioned above and placed the variant group into peanut butter jars, coffee cans, coffee cups, zip-lock bags, and plastic film containers. I am not sure what to do with the Canadian penny. I probably can’t spend it around here. I will put it in a special drawer and keep it until I next go to Canada. If any of y’all are going to Canada in the near future, come by the house, and I will give you the penny.
Some days are only good for counting washers. I had one of those days last week. I took great pride in getting my previously unorganized hardware organized. I now have nice, neat, stacked magic marker-labeled cans and containers of particular lengths, sizes, and configurations of just about any hardware I might ever need. Of course, you know that when I begin my next project, I will be short one 5-cent nut, requiring a drive to the hardware store in order to complete the project.
There is something cathartic about organizing previously unorganized things. This must be something we have inherited from our divine Creator. The Lord has a tendency of organizing all chaotic situations and making them into an ordered creation. This is how we all came to be. Out of the blackness and formless void, the Lord made all that we know, see, and touch.
Even now, when the days get long and all the creation is at peace, the Lord looks down and thinks about that woman who had ten coins and lost one and then looked and looked and looked until she found it. All ten were finally all stacked up nice and neat, and there was peace and order again. Then the Lord thinks about that shepherd who had 100 sheep until one traipses off to the nether regions, and that shepherd looks and looks and looks until he finds that lost sheep and takes it back to the other 99, just like it was the “onliest” sheep he had. The thought of all the sheep together again makes the Lord feel happy.
Sometimes, the Lord thinks about that boy who fled his family with half of his daddy’s fortune, only to later squander it away on low-life friends and corn dogs. That lost boy wound up wanting to eat pig slop and finally stole back home where his father let him be a part of the family again. The Lord is happiest when lost and broken families come together again.
On a good day, the Lord daydreams of how happiness is a good feeling, and how there is great joy when the chaos of this world is organized and everything that has lost its place is found again. We have great evidence that the Lord will do just about anything to get us back where we need to be. That is home, in God’s Kingdom, where all lost things belong.
Rev. Dan Martin is pastor of First UMC, Hendersonville. He can be reached at moose1953@hotmail.com
