When Ken was in Italy in 1965, he brought each of the children a gift.  Somehow in our many moves, the music box he bought for Becky was lost.  She looked everywhere for it.  She asked me to continue to look for it throughout the years, but eventually all the many containers from our many, many moves had been unpacked and it never turned up.  She was devastated.  It was a gift that her dad had picked out specifically for her.  I offered her one of the other things he had brought back, but that wasn't what she wanted.  "He picked the box out especially for me.  That's what I want."

Throughout all these years, she has often said how sad she was that it was gone.  As a six year old little girl she would wind the box up and listen to the music.  Fascinated.    When she finally accepted that it wasn't going to be found, she tried to find one that was identical--because it meant so much to her.  It was an inlaid wooden box from Sorrento that played "Return to Sorrento."  Although she occasionally found  boxes that were similar, they did not play the same piece of music.  They weren't right.

Two weeks ago, she called me and was excited, no, ecstatic.  She had gone to Italy again and had gone back to Sorrento--where she had been any number of times.  But this time her search through antique stores for old boxes was successful.  She found it.

Her friend Rose Ann was with her, and said that when Becky opened the box and the music began to play that Becky began to cry, silently.  Tears running down her cheeks.  Becky doesn't cry.  She is a very stoic person.  The woman who had the little shop was upset.  But Becky explained that her father had died this year and that the one thing he had left her was a box like that one.  And it had been lost.  She explained that she had been looking for another one for over forty-five years.   She bought it of course.  Some things are priceless.

Luke 15: 8-10  There was a woman who had ten pieces of silver and lost a piece.  Jesus asked:  "Doesn't she light a candle and sweep the house and seek diligently until she finds it?  And when she has found it, she calls her friends and her neighbors together, saying, Rejoice with me; for I have found the piece which I had lost.  Likewise, I say unto you, there is joy in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner that repents."   God doesn't want us to be lost.  Salvation is priceless.