The Missing Chocolate Bars by Lisa Burkhardt Worley
My husband and I are coming off a week-long trip to Galveston, Texas but before we made the drive we bought some groceries and packed the items needing to be refrigerated in a cooler. Both of us like chocolate so we picked up two large Hershey’s chocolate bars. My husband,Jeff, likes milk chocolate. I like dark chocolate. We know we bought the chocolate. We know at least one bar was in the car because it had slipped out of the bag and we both saw it. However, after we unpacked the car we realized the chocolate bars were missing. We searched the car. We searched the condo. I checked the empty grocery bags—more than once—and I looked through the trash in case I mindlessly threw them out. No sign of the chocolate.
After an exhaustive search I wondered, Perhaps our guardian angels like chocolate. The rest of the week, if we couldn’t locate something, we’d joke: “Maybe it’s with the chocolate bars.”
There was no explanation for why the chocolate bars were gone and as I reflect back on this, isn’t that what faith is? The Bible defines faith as “Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.” By faith, we accept the miraculous healing. By faith, we believe God is working behind the scenes even though we don’t see it. By faith, we trust when God closes a door.
We never found the chocolate bars. It’s still a mystery, and some things in life may remain a mystery as well. We have to have faith and accept that we may not receive the answer on this side of Heaven.
“For we know in part and we prophesy in part, but when completeness comes, what is in part disappears. When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put the ways of childhood behind me. For now we see only a reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known.”
(1 Corinthians 13: 9-12, NIV).