Tuesday, September 24, 2024

Lost and Found Lottery

SOURCE:  Beaumont Enterprise, 3/24/21, p.A2. "In Other Words," March 2021

https://people.com/human-interest/tenn-man-tracks-down-1m-winning-lottery-ticket-he-accidentally-left-in-store-parking-lot/

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/tennessee-man-loses-1-million-lottery-ticket-finds-it-again-n1261690

KEYWORDS: Lost, Found, parable, sheep, coin, son, treasure in a field, 


On March 11, 2021, Nick Slatten experienced the kind of panic few of us will ever encounter.  He’d just won a million dollars in the Tennessee lottery, but he lost his ticket purchased the day before.  He frantically began retracing his steps, and eventually ended up at the auto parts store in Sparta where he’d taken his brother to buy a car part.  On that windy March day, he spotted the lottery ticket lying in the parking lot and quickly grabbed it.  The lottery commission explained that anyone can claim an unsigned winning ticket, so who knows how many people stepped over a ticket worth $1,178,746 thinking it was nothing more than discarded trash.  Although I’ve never bought a lottery ticket and consider my odds of winning virtually the same as those who do buy them, this piece of recent history paints a picture of what so many do with Christ.  An opportunity of infinitely greater value than a lottery ticket lies before us and we step over it in pursuit of lesser things.  Nick Slatten reminds us of Jesus’ words about a woman desperately searching for her lost treasure until it was found (Luke 15:8-10). 

No comments: