Theft and Recovery

My wife and I had a pretty rough Monday. All in all it had been a good weekend.

I was in Miami. A friend of mine who is also a pastor and church planter there was in Taiwan with his wife adopting their second child. He called a few weeks ago and asked if I might be able to come down and preach for him. I happened to have the week off this past Sunday as Tom was scheduled to open the ‘Without Ceasing’ series at True North.

I had a great time with the people at The Pursuit Christian Church, Miami, ate some great Cuban food and had an overall enjoyable weekend. Right up until I went to leave for the airport Monday morning. I had parked my rental car in the parking garage attached to the hotel, so I felt like it would be pretty safe. Sadly, this was not the case. I found the car with it’s passenger window smashed and my GPS unit and iPod gone. This, by the way, was the second iPod I’ve had stolen from me in a month!!

The experience was a challenge for me. I had left enough time that morning to spend some time with God (which I had already done) and grab a Cuban coffee on my way to the airport (which I had not done.) More on Cuban coffee another time.

So I had started the day right, and determined to praise God and use my time well. I was immediately challenged by what was obviously good cause to get angry and be bitter about what I’d lost. I’m happy to say that although I obviously wasn’t pleased with having this stuff stolen from me, I was able to thank God for the many blessings in my life, clean up the broken glass and head out to the airport otherwise unscathed.

What Budget rent-a-car will do to me over the loss of their car window remains to be seen.

Even with the delay, I made it through airport security with just enough time to call my wife and check in. I seriously couldn’t believe what she said to me: during the night, someone had broken into her mini-van (right in our driveway) and stolen her GPS, her iPod and the face to her radio. Now what someone is going to do with just the face of a radio is beyond me, but whatever.

Both of our cars broken into? On the same night? In different cities? What are the odds?

This HAD to be God saying something to us, right? Right. Without a doubt.

Right about now is probably where you’re expecting me to bring home the moral of the story, but the truth is, I’m still processing it. I think there are several teaching points here for me and for whoever might be reading. They are:

#1 – I AM BLESSED!! Just being in possession of things that other people want to steal means I’m blessed. All told, we probably had about $1200 worth of stuff stolen from us that day. And you know what? It didn’t change our lives all that much. We still have enough clothes to wear, enough food to eat and a four walls and a roof over our heads. All is well in Bert-and-Jen world.

#2 – My stuff is temporary. There’s nothing you own that can’t be taken from you except your relationship with God. Everything else will pass away, break or be stolen. And even the stuff you keep the end of your days will be left behind when you take your last breath. So hold on to your stuff loosely and don’t be too fixated on it.

#3 – There are some desperate people out there who need our help. I’d like to think that the people that stole this stuff needed to buy food for themselves or medicine for their children. But the odds are against it. In probability, they needed money for drugs. Either way, it’s hard to imagine why someone would risk going to jail if the need wasn’t (at least in their eyes) extreme. This experience reminded me that even in my sheltered little world on Long Island, there’s a lot of needy people around and people like me who are blessed need to pay it forward.

#4 – We need to forgive those who hurt us. Seriously. Life is WAY too short for me to walk around all ticked off about this. I know that the chances of either of the two parties reading this is almost nil, but my name and email addy were on the back of my iPod, so it’s at least conceivable. If you’re reading, I forgive you. No joke. And if you need something else, reach out and ask. You probably don’t believe me, but I have been forgiven for much in my life, so it’s not that big a stretch for me to offer forgiveness in return.

That’s about all for now. Who knows, maybe this line of thinking will evolve into a message series.

Got some ideas? Did I miss something? Drop me a comment. Upper right hand of this post.

I’d love to hear from you.