Essay: Lost
Reflection on Luke 2:41-52 (Revised Common Lectionary gospel text for December 29, 2024) My vestments were found. My kid looks lost. My worship vestments had been missing for nearly a year, including my alb, a multi-colored stole that worked for every season of the church year, and a sealskin cross made for me by an Inupiat (Alaska Native) elder. I had been working in a denominational office; I was basically a traveling preacher and I’d left my vestments somewhere – but where? Multiple and slightly embarrassing calls to congregations over several months yielded nothing. I lamented this loss at a clergy gathering. The pastor at my home congregation – where my family and I worship when I’m not traveling – overheard and said she’d seen an alb, stole and cross of that description hanging in her office. “You looked everywhere, and here it was, at home!” she exclaimed. A lost item is frustrating; a lost person is terrifying. I’m a child of the 1980s, an era when dairy producers put pho...
