I received a message on Facebook on Saturday from a total stranger. The lady had taken the photograph on the right and asked if the book was mine. As you can see it was a Sunday School prize presented to me in 1964, I would have been five, almost six when this book first came into my possession. The lady very kindly returned the book to me and it arrived in this mornings post, I don’t know when the book left my possession, maybe at the time of mum death around thirty years ago and if I am being honest, I have never really missed it, but I am delighted to have it back, thanks to the wonder of social media. There are several lessons I have learned from looking at this book again after all these years.
- How the world has changed
The book is titled Enid Blyton’s Daffodil Story Book and I remember my parents reading the stories to me as a young lad. It reminds me what a very different world we lived in back in the sixties. I couldn’t imagine reading these stories to my grandson, or at least if I insisted on doing so, they might be relevant to me, but not to him. There may be a lesson to learn from that as we seek to go back to how were as we emerge from lockdown. The world is in a different place today to where it was at the beginning at March, we either moved forward with the community around us or find ourselves being left behind.
- Learning what is precious to us.
I guess that for fifty five years, I have given very little thought to this book, I have no idea how it made it’s journey from West Yorkshire to Maidenhead in Berkshire and now back to Ipswich in Suffolk, how many hands it has passed through, how many families it has been a part of, it now feels all the more precious to me, because of the story that is now attached. One person’s kindness has resulted in me becoming reacquainted with my book. How many people have been a part of the Christian fellowship and have journeyed now in a different direction to us, one person’s act of kindness might well reunite us, you might be the very person to offer that word.
- The joy of the father.
I love the “lost Parables” and whether it is the lamb, the coin or the son, there is much rejoicing when the owner is reunited with that which is lost. I can’t exactly say that I have been searching for my book, if I am being honest, I hadn’t even noticed it was missing, but the joy when I opened the parcel and saw my book again was wonderful. I have another book on my shelves entitled “Gone but not forgotten, Church leaving and returning” about the generations of people who once belonged but have gone. What rejoicing there will be when they return.
Part of our calling is to Seek the Lost, they might not even know they are.