What does one sheep, one coin, one son who is also a brother, have in common?
Other than that each is singular, and the implication is that there are after all other sheep, and more coins, and another son, what perhaps is unfamiliar to some readers but also known to many, is that in each case – the lone and lonely bleating lost sheep; the missing but nevertheless valuable coin; and the son who was also a brother – each was found.
Found.
What a wonderful word is that word found.
Found is past tense for find, which can suggest serendipitously having discovered by chance, or having stumbled across some delightful surprise unexpectedly.
Like having found a heart-shaped stump at the top of a peak I climbed recently on the very day of the one year anniversary of my wife’s death to cancer.
I may not have found that tender reminder of so great a love we had, except that I was so tired from the climb up that mountain. Every slow step mattered, the tripping hazards being many, and therefore demanding I watch carefully, throughout the difficult ascent.
But there it was.
I had found, right smack dab in front of me, on a hike just to get away; just in search of something I didn’t know what; on a day most difficult; I had found a treasure, or rather a treasure had found me.
I would climb the stairs to the fire lookout, write my wife a love letter in the guest book telling her how grateful I was for having found someone like you, then hope to catch a glimpse of the mountain but it was obscured by trees.
What was not obscured, but plainly in my path to ease the pain in my heart, was what was at the base of those stairs, a sawed-off stump in the shape of a heart, a reminder, a treasure, a keepsake photo forever of that for which my own heart was longing, yearning, and missing.
But that I had found.
