Logic finds lost objects

Don't get me wrong. In the past, I've been a firm believer in praying to St. Anthony, the Patron Saint of lost objects, when I've lost something. And I've had success with St. Anthony, although it may take a couple of days for the lost object to appear.

And I've prayed to God and Jesus Christ when I've misplaced something important and needed it right now. “All power is the Lord's, help me find my car keys!” St. Anthony seemed to be more effective.

I have this computer friend that says, “Nope. Use logic.” Of course he would say this, as computer circuits are logic circuits. I debated this with him. “Don't you feel that there's no other explanation sometimes but that God caused such and such?”

“Nada. Dig deeply into logic and you'll uncover the answer.” This fellow, even though he's a computer genius, uses only a flip phone, doesn't trust social media because it invades privacy, and believes that the written word is best preserved on paper. (I believe this, too. In a power outage, words in The Cloud can't be found.)

The other day I couldn't find my truck keys, which also had a key for the barn on its ring, and a padlock key for the trailer. It was driving me nuts looking for the keys, as I wanted to do some welding in the barn. Of course I had backup keys, so I could get by. But still.

I started praying to St. Anthony, but remembering my computer friend, I thought I'd try logic. “OK, I had the keys yesterday when I was working in the barn. I also walked down to the garden and cut some lettuce and pulled a few radishes.” I started retracing my steps, saying to myself, “Logic tells me to go to the barn.”

I retraced my steps, scanning the ground as I walked. Nothing. But then I walked down to the garden, scanning the ground once again. Down by the garden, there the keys were in the grass next to the lettuce. I had reached into my pocket for my knife to cut the lettuce. I must have pulled the keys out when I withdrew my hand. Ah, ha. Logic worked.

I had this packet of Allen wrenches that needed to go out to the barn. I had an arm load of stuff that needed to go to the barn also. On the way, I stopped by the garden, my happy place, to see what surprise it held for me. When I got to the barn, a couple of the Allen wrenches had slipped out of the holder and were missing. Dang. OK, logic tells me if I retrace my steps, I might get lucky and find the wrenches in the grass before the mower does. I retraced my steps carefully. An Allen wrench can be hard to spot in the grass and corn-shuck mess from the derecho. Amazingly, I spied one Allen wrench, and a little further, there was the other lying neatly in the grass. What luck! Both Allen wrenches found using logic. Wow!

Then I was picking our first ripe tomatoes, so pleased that we would have fresh garden tomatoes. I was starting to sweat, so I took my hearing aids out of my ears. You don't want to get hearing aids wet. I put them in my shirt pocket.

When I got back to the house, showing the tomatoes to Ginnie, I reached in my shirt pocket for my hearing aids. Only one was there. Darn it! Logic told me the hearing aid had to be right back there in the garden where I had taken them out of my ears and put them in my shirt pocket. Oh, boy. A small hearing aid could be really tough to find in that mass of tomato vines and cornstalk mulch. But I had to look for it.

I went back to the garden, got down on my knees in exactly the same spot, I thought, where I had taken my hearing aids out. I said out loud, “OK, logic tells me that hearing aid has to be right here.” I looked down, and there it was, almost blended in with the corn stalks. Hallelujah! A tingle went up and down my spine. I believe God is in charge of logic also.

  Buy Photo