Thief

I usually get into the office around 6:00AM most days. Early mornings are when I get the bulk of my work done . . . for God. :) Early in the morning I can dive into His Word and not really be bothered by the usual distractions, like . . . you know, work. I can brush up on the games for our youth group. I can do research on-line for my incredibly fascinating stories (yawn). I can also keep up to date with friends and family by quickly scrolling through the Facebook statuses. This morning, however, my "normal" routine never got started. When I arrived in my cubical one day this past week, I discovered that . . . I had been robbed!!!

My daughter had given me this really cool sign for Christmas. It spelled out F-A-I-T-H using some photographic tiles and they sat on a neat little wooden holder like one would use when playing Scrabble. I had positioned it rather nicely in my office so people could easily see it when they came in. I'm such a subliminal evangelist.

But this morning the letters were out of place and one of them, the letter T, was actually missing. Gone! And that wasn't all. The monitor for my workstation had been messed with. Someone had violated me AND my office!

I sent an e-mail to our company CFO, informing him of the theft. "Why would anyone take just one letter?" I thought. Later, I explained the whole situation to my friend at work and she couldn't figure it out either. She felt really bad because she had also lost an item at work and MY loss had brought all the memories of that day back for her. Why do people steal things?

"Take a look through your garbage, my friend suggested. "Maybe someone didn't appreciate your "faith" statement and threw one of the letters away." But why just the one letter? Why not the whole thing?

Well, I guess looking through the trash couldn't hurt\so I took a token look through the trash. Nothing. This was really weird. Why would someone steal one of five letters and then, to really drive the point home, mess with my monitor? Just to bug me? I don't have any "enemies" that I am aware of.

Okay, one last search. Nothing on the shelf. Nothing on my desk. It wasn't anywhere to be found! I pulled my desk chair back and looked under my desk. "Nothing. Wait a minute . . . what's that WAY back in the corner??" That's it! It was the missing letter!!! How the heck did it get WAY back there??

Then, slowly, the available clues began to speak themselves into a suddenly, very obvious story. It wasn't long before I figured out what had happened. It was . . . the cleaning people!!

A feather duster brushed across a shelf, the pictured tiles scattering - two of them flying behind my monitor, one of them falling through behind the desk and onto the floor. The perp knew they had done something wrong - even grabbing one of the missing tiles from behind my monitor, bending the screen out of alignment  as they did so. But they missed the one tile. The one way in to back corner, under my desk, in the dark.

I can almost see the look on their face as they tried to figure out what F-A-I . . . H spelled. Ha!

You know, I never actually had seen this person who "rearranged" my cube, I never actually saw them do anything. Yet there was ample evidence that "someone" had been here. There were signs all over the place! A very incriminating story had been written for me simply by piecing together the clues they had left behind.

And what about my initial reaction? I was sure someone had stolen one of my letters! I was SURE of it! But I was wrong. "There is a way that seems so right to a man" . . . : Proverbs 14:12. Mhmm.

There was no eyewitness to what had occurred. Not a single word was spoken. Yet it was very clear what had happened.

And so it is with God and His creation. We can't see Him. We never saw anybody create the universe. But we DO have words written about Him. And we do have signs of His creation. They are everywhere! Take a look around at the clues! Take a look at the evidence. The whole world speaks of His creation!

Big bang theory? Yeah, I believe in that. God created the universe. BANG!!! :)

"For since the creation of the world God's invisible qualities--his eternal power and divine nature--have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that men are without excuse." - Romans 1:20