The Parable of the Lost Phone

Below is my ‘Vicar’s Letter’ for February’s St Aldhelm’s Parish Magazine. At the time, this episode felt like a darned nuisance but the outcome was cheering – and the story made for an enjoyable assembly at Bp Aldhelm’s School, for which I took my bike into the school hall and called my phone which I had concealed beneath a heap of leaves. 

Dear Friends,

 

I went, one Saturday, to a study day at St Clement’s Church in Boscombe. By the time I left to cycle home it was getting dark and I put on a high-vis yellow sash. This rubbed uncomfortably against the phone in my top pocket – so I pulled over and dropped the phone into my front ‘camera-bag’ type of holder.

 

I arrived home, tired, cold, hungry – and found there was no phone in the bag…

 

First I drove back to where I remembered transferring it from my pocket. Perhaps I had inexplicably missed and the phone had fallen to the ground! But there was no sign.

 

I returned home and wondered what to do. I couldn’t see any alternative but to set out again, on the bike this time, and retrace my ride, past Coy Pond, along the Bourne Gardens cycle route, through the busy town centre to the pier, up the steep Bath Road, right along Gervis Road, past St Swithun’s Church and on to Boscombe Gardens where I had last seen the phone – but still there was no hint of it. I turned around and slowly walked or cycled towards home in the dark still hoping to see it.

 

Using my work phone I had been calling it from time to time, hoping that if picked up by an honest passer-by they might answer. Now, as a desperate last throw, I called repeatedly, waited for the answer phone, then called it again. And again…

 

I was most of the way back, along an especially dark section of the Upper Gardens cycle route, when I thought I could make out, distantly, my ring tone. I rang again and there it was: lying half-hidden among the leaves and undergrowth where it must have fallen after being bumped and jostled out of my cycle bag.

I had saved a flask of coffee and went to sit in the very cold Coy Pond gardens to make a celebratory phone call.

 

And I reflected – that my painstaking, frustrating, tiring, cold search for my phone was as nothing compared to God’s searching for me my whole life through. He keeps calling me. Will I answer?

 

With love,

Fr Pip