LOST AND FOUND! 5/22/11

BEAGLES are notorious for keeping their noses to the ground and running. You can call them until you are blue in the face but they just keep on running. Our first Beagle was our first child! She was loving, fun and very rambunctious. She loved kids and would sit on her hind quarters and paw the air, begging us for whatever she wanted. She could sit like that forever and ever. She loved Christmas ribbon candy; packaged prunes and wanted more of the bed than she needed.

OFTEN I would find her looking sorrowfully out the front screen door. She wanted the kids to just come play with her; but mostly, she wanted to be out there with them. After her first litter of 6 puppies were safely in their new homes, Frosty looked for greener pastures when she discovered that the screen wasn’t locked and she was on the other side. Free at last; free at last!

WHEN WE discovered she was gone, I felt panic and began the long search. Jim and I went up and down the neighborhood, thinking she couldn’t have gone far. We looked and hollered for days! My mother asked if we had put her in the lost and found of the newspaper. Of course not, I said. If someone stole her they wouldn’t respond anyway. Early the following week Mom called; “It’s in today’s lost and found.” “You put it in the paper?” Of course! They will bill you!

LATER that evening we received a call. A couple who lived clear on the other side of a major highway call 190th, which was not actually a part of our neighborhood, had taken in a beagle who seemed to match the description in the paper. We quickly went to check. We drove up to a house that on the outside looked quite a bit like ours. The master of the home let us in and curled up on one corner of the couch was our Frosty. They let her get up on the couch!

THE MAN told us that she appeared at their front door during a rain storm. They heard someone pounding on the front door and when they opened it, there was this dog sitting up begging. I closed the door and she pounded on the front door again. I opened it and there she sat begging; pawing the air for all she was worth. We let her in! We fed her! The next morning we gave her a bath; went to the vet; bought a collar and some dog food. We decided to keep her!

I WAS so happy to see her again! I was so glad she hadn’t got hurt! I was amazed that these people were going to keep her. But then, they have a couple of small children just like us and Frosty thought she was already home. We offered to pay these people for their kindness and taking such good care of our first born, but they refused! We gathered Frosty and all her new stuff, and quietly leaving some money on the table next to the door, we took our lost, but now found, home.

JESUS SPEAKS to that which is lost and how much rejoicing takes place when the lost is found. You know how it feels to lose something and how lost you feel without it. Many times you know what it means when, what you have lost is found again. The lost coin in Luke 15:8-10 says; “when it is found she gathers her friends and neighbors in to celebrate.” We say, that is not as important as the parable of the lost sheep! But they are connected.

“AND WHEN he comes home, he calls together his friends and his neighbors, saying to them, “Rejoice with me, for I have found my sheep which was lost.” Luke 15:6 In verse 7 Jesus says; “Just so, I tell you, there will be more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents, than over ninety-nine righteous persons who need no repentance.”

FURTHER ON in chapter 15, we read about the lost son. “Bring quickly the best robe and put it on him and put a ring on his hand and shoes on his feet; and bring the fatted calf and kill it, and let us eat and make merry; for this my son was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is found!” Frosty slept at the foot of Jennifer’s bed for two days after returning home. When the lost sinner is found, he finds rest in the saving grace of Jesus! By Jane Ann Crenshaw 5/18/11