A Thief in the Day

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A Thief in the Day

June 4, 2007

By Shirley McDonald

A few months ago, my husband and I decided we would go to the hospital to visit a friend as soon as I got home from work. While getting dressed, my husband found that all the money was missing from his wallet—money that he knew with certainty had been in the wallet just a few hours previously. I assured him that I had not taken the money. (I never take money from his wallet!) He began asking our neighbors if they had seen any unusual activity at our house while he was in the backyard near his workshop using the pressure washer to wash off landscape timbers for a project for our church’s craft festival.

The neighbor across the street had indeed seen something unusual. A young woman and a young man had been canvassing our neighborhood (a quiet, safe one-street subdivision in a small town), asking if they could cut grass for anyone. The neighbor had watched the young man ring our doorbell at the front door. Finding the door locked and no one answering the doorbell, the young man had opened the gate to the back yard and gone inside. Soon the neighbor saw him come back around and ring the doorbell at the front door again. Then he went back through the gate into the back yard—and repeated this action once more before getting into the truck with the young woman and leaving the neighborhood. The neighbor knew my husband was at home, so she thought everything was okay.

We tried to reconstruct the probable actions of this young man, deciding that he had to have seen my husband working with the pressure washer. However, on the third trip to the backyard, he realized that Bobby was not looking toward the house, the noise of the pressure washer was masking any noise he would make, and the back door was unlocked. (Who would ever have thought one needed to lock his door when he was in the backyard in sight of the back door?) The young man also must have figured out that he could easily escape through the door from our bedroom onto the patio if Bobby had decided to come into our house while the young man was in the house. Having decided this, the young man went into our house, through the utility room, through the laundry room, through the kitchen/dining area, through the living room, and then down a long hall into our bedroom at the very back of the house. He found the wallet that was in a pair of jeans on our bed, removed the money, and sneaked out of the house with Bobby being none the wiser.

We were lucky that there was only $75 in the wallet. We were lucky my husband didn’t come into the house during the burglary; no way would he have let the guy take the money without a fight! We were lucky that the guy didn’t take the guns, the electronic equipment, the old coins, and the many packs of wrapped coins. Apparently, the currency in the wallet was all he needed at the moment.

However, I did not feel lucky at the time; I felt angry that someone was brazen enough to steal something from my house with my husband in plain sight, frustrated that he got away with it, and violated that a stranger had walked through my house, even into my bedroom. I also was afraid that he planned to come back later to steal items to sell or pawn.

Spiritual parallels

After reliving the incident, I realized there are spiritual lessons to learn from this incident.

Bobby was working diligently for the church while a thief stole something of value from him. We, too, can be working for the church and allow the “thief” to steal our consecration—we are spending time working for God, but not spending time with God.
Bobby thought everything was safe and nothing amiss; he never knew until later that something of value had been stolen from him. We often are confident in our own ability to handle things and become complacent and even ritualistic in our worship. We need to be reminded to “Watch and pray, that ye enter not into temptation: the spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak” (Matthew 26:41).
Just as Bobby searched for his wallet and felt something was wrong with the way it had been placed in the pocket of the jeans, we must search to make sure nothing is wrong with our hearts, that our “calling and election” is sure (II Peter 1:10).
We had never dreamed that a burglary could happen at our house, especially with Bobby in the back yard and the front door locked. Yet it did, and the money was forever gone. So often we never dream that we can lose our closeness to God, yet through careless spiritual living and neglecting to pray and study His Word, we leave the door open for worldliness to take away the things that really matter.
Immediately after the burglary, we were oh, so very careful to be sure the house was secure since we (or at least I in particular) still felt unsafe. However, the further away from that time we get, the easier it is to forget that someone did invade our house. So it is with us as Christians. The further away from Calvary we get, the easier it is to forget that Satan is after our souls and will invade our spiritual houses.

“But know this, that if the goodman of the house had known in what watch the thief would come, he would have watched, and would not have suffered his house to be broken up” (Matthew 24:43).

Let us always be diligent and guard our souls, taking whatever measures are necessary to ensure that we allow no room for spiritual theft to occur in our lives.

ninetyandnine.com

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Shirley McDonald hopes to be even more diligent guarding her soul than she is guarding her home. She is thankful for a husband who will get up during the middle of the night to investigate those strange and startling sounds she sometimes hears outside the door.