Flashback: The Distraught Man

While I'm involved in another project, I am re-posting some of my favorite essays. This one is from April 25, 2011.

The kingdom of God is like a man who became distraught when he could not find his USB thumb drive. “Every time I am finished with the thumb drive, I always place it in the left hand corner of the top drawer of the cabinet beside the computer,” the man said, “but now when I need it, it is not to be found!”

The man then searched through the drawer. When he could not find the thumb drive, he emptied the drawer completely. He found many things that were no longer needed, but the thumb drive was not there.

“What am I to do?” the man asked with increasing alarm. For the thumb drive had 8 gigabytes of memory, therefore all manner of important information was contained therein. There were photos of family and many pictures taken in various places. Other files held great numbers of music recordings stored for future listening. There were also files upon files of essays and writings; there were works in progress, and there was important information for projects at work.

The man then began to straighten up everything around the desk, which was not in his nature, in order to see if the thumb drive had been inadvertently set to one side on the computer desk. When that yielded no results (except to provide a very clean orderly desk top, which was not in the man’s nature) the man then pulled out the computer desk and searched on the floor and along the wall behind the desk. Next he went to the cabinet and searched throughout, to no avail.

“What if the thumb drive inadvertently dropped from its usual place in the top drawer into the waste basket?" The man was somewhat relieved that the garbage truck had not run last Friday because it was Good Friday, so he went out to the garbage pails and sorted through the refuse contained therein, still to no avail.

“Perhaps, I was negligent the last time I used the thumb drive – I might have put it in my pocket instead.” Heartened by the possibility, the man then went through all the pockets of his pants, those in the dirty laundry and also those yet hanging in the closet. Yea he searched even through shirt pockets and jackets that he had not worn in months, but what could he do except search, for so much was contained within that thumb drive.

When his wife came home, he said, “Lo, but I am distraught!” and he recounted his day to her. Every suggestion she had had already been tried by the man. Then she said, “We will ask our daughter when she comes home from school if she has seen it.”

When his daughter arrived, the man asked her if she had seen his thumb drive. “Oh yes,” she said, “I borrowed it to do some work for school. Here it is on the end table.”

Then great was the man’s rejoicing, for so much that he had invested in that USB was now in his hands again! He was exceedingly glad and relieved, and he also had a new appreciation for that lady in the Bible who lost her coin.



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