Belmont Vision - Opinion - The Missing Key

ISSUE: 01/31/07 > Opinion > The missing key

Stephen Sargent

A few weeks ago, I lost my keys. This is not out of the ordinary for me, considering I either lose my keys, wallet or phone about once a day. It has gotten to the point where I’m not even concerned if I cannot find them because I know they will eventually turn up. Well this particular time, I was starting to get a little worried. After a group bible study, I had searched every room of the friend’s apartment where I left them. I had three friends helping me and we still couldn’t find them after an hour of hunting. We looked under couch cushions, trash and people. They were nowhere to be found.

I went back to my dorm, retracing my steps along the way to see if I had dropped them on the way over. No luck. As I wandered into my dorm (which my roommate unlocked), I took notice of how late it was. I was really beginning to worry now. The biggest concern that kept running through my head was the fifty dollars it would take to get a new dorm key. My mind began to become bitter at Belmont’s expensive duplicate key policy. I also got mad at Thrailkill (yes, the building itself) for having keys that couldn’t be duplicated. So here I am, standing in my dorm at 2 a.m., angry at Belmont, Thrailkill and even God for the circumstances that I had caused myself.

I decided the best thing to do would be to say a prayer and try to have faith that I would find them the next morning. So I got in my bed and confidently told God that I wouldn’t worry about it and asked him to bring them to me first thing in the morning. With that, I forgot about the keys and fell asleep.

The next morning, I woke up with a sense of peace. I was now confident that God was going to lead me straight to the keys. I went back over to my friend’s apartment and began looking in the same spots I’d already looked over twice before. My friend, Tera, came in and helped as well. After only a few minutes, Tera lifted up a blanket to expose the missing keys sitting there on the floor. She tossed them to me and I gave her a hug in excitement. I left shortly after, more joyful than ever.

Typically, this scenario of me losing my keys wouldn’t be something I would even remember a few weeks later, let alone tell others about. But I think what made this incident stand out in my mind was how panicked I got over it. In just a short amount of time, my wonderful night of fellowship and prayer turned into a block of stress. Within minutes, I began getting angry towards the most random things and my night turned to shambles.

Why do we let the littlest things destroy the most beautiful blessings in our lives? For me, the biggest blessing I have had at Belmont has been my Thursday night bible study. It has been a time where I have been able to have some deep discussions about how God is working on and around our campus with some great friends. It has also been a wonderful source of encouragement and inspiration in my spiritual walk. It’s great. But then I allowed all that I had going for me that night to be halted by a few missing keys. My worry cancelled out all the positivity that I had gained that night.

As Christians, we always hear about “trials and tribulations” and how they only help us to grow in our faith. I think we add on so many of these trials ourselves by worrying. Worrying about the stuff we have to do before the week is over. Worrying about broken relationships. Worrying about living up to God’s standard. Worrying about lost keys. God doesn’t want us to worry about all these things. It is inevitable they will become problems in all of our lives. Yet, how we face them is where the real trial is.

My sixth-grade teacher once told our class, “We spend so much of our time worrying about something that’s going to happen to us or something that’s already happened to us. How come we can’t just enjoy the here and now?” So next time (probably later on today) you have another trial come your way, will you let all the panic build in your mind and begin pointing fingers, or will you sit back, relax, and know that God is going to get you through it, just like he did yesterday?