With guests due to arrive in our home for a visit, I took a moment to sweep up crumbs and wipe paw prints from the floors around our kitchen. As I moved about the room, I found a small mound of wood shavings in a forgotten corner and bent down to sweep them into my hand. A basket of birch logs from a tree we felled sits in the same corner, and I slid it aside to clean more thoroughly.
As I bent down, the glow of dull brass caught my eye from the bottom of the wicker basket. I pushed the logs aside, reached my hand inside, and pulled out a brass skeleton key that matches the keyholes to a dresser in my kitchen.
The key disappeared years ago, and I secretly blamed one of the many small children who visited our home and found the key irresistible for its heavy weight and soft gold glow. It fit perfectly in one’s palm and made a satisfying clink in the keyhole.
When the key first disappeared, I searched like the woman in Jesus’ parable who lost one of her ten silver coins. She lit a lamp, swept the house, and diligently searched until she found it. I gave up in exasperation after a few days, puzzled by the mystery of its stubborn hiddenness in a space so small and familiar.
Years after I quit searching, I still thought of my lost key on occasion. I knew it lay hidden in the house somewhere, and without fanfare or warning, I followed an inconspicuous trail of crumbs that led me straight to it. I might have missed it, and perhaps I have on previous occasions, for a lack of paying attention.
A lost key seems like such an insignificant loss when more important things disappear from life without notice–a belief, a career, a home, a person, a dream, a plan, a sense of security. One minute they rest heavy and bright and sure in the palm of our hand, and the next they are gone. We remember only the comfortable weight of them.
I don’t know how long we must commit to search for the pieces that go missing. Some things will never be found or fixed exactly as we wish this side of heaven. Perhaps it’s better to remember what we long for, to hold the weight of it in our memory, and to remain alert and attentive to the possibility that its hiddenness is only momentary. One blink of an eye, one trail of crumbs, one moment of attention, and the loss may become a story of redemption.
