Life has a way of teaching us. One of the lessons I learned as a teenager involved a rusty metal box. My brother and I were cleaning a yard and preparing it to be sodded. We kept kicking around this old metal box that looked like an Altoid box. The guy we were working for eventually saw it, picked it up and opened it. Inside was a wedding ring set. I couldn’t believe I had been kicking that around. A missed opportunity. Recently, I saw a folded piece of lined paper in the church parking lot. My mind went back to those wedding rings, “You never know what it could be,” I thought. I picked it up, I opened it, and I read it. Written in pencil were these words, “Do not fear, for I am with you; do not anxiously look about you, for I am your God. I will strengthen you, surely I will help you, surely I will uphold you with My righteous right hand” (Isa. 41:10). What a treasure to be reminded of.
I am not one to go all “foot prints of Jesus” Hallmark card about these kinds of things. However, consider this. The same prophet wrote, “For as the rain and the snow come down from heaven, and do not return there without watering the earth and making it bear and sprout, and furnishing seed to the sower and bread to the eater; so will My word be which goes forth from My mouth; it will not return to Me empty, without accomplishing what I desire, and without succeeding in the matter for which I sent it” (55:10-11). In that moment, His word accomplished exactly what it was supposed to. I am not saying God had someone write that verse and leave it in the parking lot for me to find. I am saying thousands of years later, through different languages, in a different culture, on a different continent someone copied down God’s message on common paper with a No. 2 pencil. In that moment, it was as powerful to the reader as it was to those who received it from the hand of Isaiah.
At the time, God was communicating to His people about future deliverance. Who wouldn’t want a message of assurance from their God that He will strengthen, help and uphold you? Later in the same chapter He speaks about the false gods. “But when I look, there is no one, and there is no counselor among them who, if I ask, can give an answer. ‘Behold, all of them are false; their works are worthless, their molten images are wind and emptiness’” (Isa. 41:28-29). With the false gods there is no such assurance and no confidence of a god that claims us and reassures us of His presence. No one to comfort.
I found comfort and encouragement from the message of my God written on scrap paper in the parking lot. No matter what form we find it in, His message is still valid. He still speaks to His people. PSA, please don’t litter in the parking lot.