From Keep a Quiet Heart, by Elisabeth Elliot, p119. The chapter is entitled "Lost and Found." Published by Servant Publications, Ann Arbor Michigan. 1995. Mrs. Elliot attributes the story to a first person account received from Brenda Foltz of Princeton, Minnesota who went rock climbing for her first time. I started up the rock as fast as I could, determined to "set my face like a flint " toward the peak. After a time, I came to a difficult ledge, and my breathless scrambling came to an abrupt halt. Suddenly the rope was pulled too taut and hit me square in the eye. "Oh NO!" I thought wildly, "my contact lens is GONE!" From my precarious perch I looked everywhere on the rope and sharp granite rock for a tiny, transparent lens, which could easily be mistaken for a water droplet. "Lord Jesus, Help me find it!" I prayed and pleaded, knowing the hopelessness of my search with such limited mobility. I looked as long as I could maintain my hold, praying with a sinking heart. Finally I resumed my climb with one last glimmer of hope--maybe the contact was still in my eye, crumpled up in the corner or up under my eyelid. When I reached the top, I had a friend check to see if she could find it in my eye. It wasn’t there. Every hope was gone. I was disappointed, and anxious about getting a new contact so far from home. As we sat and rested, surveying the world from such a gloriously high perspective, the fragment of a verse popped into my head: "The eyes of the Lord God go to and fro through the whole earth." God knows exactly where my contact is this moment from His high vantage point, the amazing thought struck me. But I’ll never see it again, I concluded. So still glum, I headed down the path to the bottom where the others were preparing to climb. About half an hour later another girl set out where I had also begun my climb. She had no inkling of the missing contact. But there, at the steep bottom of the rock face, she let out an excited cry: "Hey you guys —did anyone lose a contact?" I rushed over as she continued yelling, "There’s an ANT carrying a contact down the mountain!" Sure enough. Special delivery! I bent down, retrieved my contact from the hardworking ant, doused it with water and put it back in my eye, rejoicing. I was in awe, as if my Father had just given me, though so undeserving, a big hug, and said, "My precious daughter, I care about every detail of your life." I wrote to tell my family. My dad drew a cartoon portraying an ant, lugging a big contact five times its size. The ant was saying to God, "Lord, I don ’t understand why You want me to drag this thing down! What use is it anyway? I don’t even know what it is, and I certainly can’t eat it and it’s BIG and HEAVY. Oh well, if you say so, Lord, I’ll try, but it seems like a useless piece of junk to me!" I marvel at God ’s ways and how He chooses to reveal His mercy in ways far beyond our human comprehension.

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