God: Your Protective Shade

Osha, my kitty, loves to play with the gift bags under the tree.

Oops. The bag fell over and Osha is afraid she is in trouble.

My son, Matthew, and I went shopping Wednesday night at the mall and afterwards I gave Matthew (a strapping young man) my shopping bag full of items to carry. (I am training him to be respectful and courteous to women, or maybe I just got tired of holding the bag.)

At around supper time, we stopped to eat in the food fair at the mall before heading home. Matthew set the shopping bag on the floor beside him while we ate, but forgot to pick it up again when we left.

When we arrived home, I asked Matthew where the shopping bag was. He gave me that blank look and raised eyebrow which says, "You don't want to know."

I just shook my head and smiled to myself. I could write a book on raising sons.

I decided then and there that there was no point in going back to the Mall — no one would be honest enough in this day and age to take a shopping bag to the lost and found.

As the evening progressed, I kept having a nagging feeling inside me that maybe I might be too pessimistic. Maybe the person who discovered my shopping bag was an honest person. I started to even feel guilty for my negative assumption.

I decided to give the mall a call. When I talked with the security guard on duty that night, I was pleasantly surprised when he told me that my shopping bag was indeed there. Someone had brought it to him.

Wow, I thought, that was really cool that God directed the eyes of a kind-hearted and thoughtful person to see the abandoned shopping bag and deliver it to the security guard for safe keeping. I wish I could have had the opportunity to thank the individual. I did, however, thank God.

That night I learned three valuable lessons:

1. Don't give your shopping bag to a young man to take care of when he most likely has his mind, I mean stomach, on other things.
2. The world is still full of good, honest, and selfless people.
3. The Lord watches over us. He even watches over a bag of store-bought items left mindlessly behind.

"The Lord Himself watches over you!

The Lord stands beside you as your protective shade."

Psalm 121:5

I love how the verse above gives the image of the Lord standing beside us to protect us by giving us shade from the harsh, burning rays of the sun. What a beautiful picture to remember in our minds.