Lost Pager

1n 1998, I was helping a friend with construction near Cleveland, Tennessee.  They were out in the country, and I was laying the block for their house.  The second afternoon, the neighbor’s black lab sauntered over, and we became friends.  That is until I caught him carrying off my pager in his slobbery mouth.  When I shouted, he dropped the pager and ran off a distance to watch me.  I carried my pager on by belt, but the blocks got in the way, so I had laid it on top of the new wall in case my wife called.  These were the days before cell phones were readily available and cheap enough for me to afford.  I could afford $10 a month for the pager.  I left for lunch the next afternoon and went to a nearby convenience store for crackers and Vienna sausages but realized that I had left my pager at the jobsite.  I hurried back but couldn’t find the pager anywhere.  The dog wasn’t around either, which made him a suspect.  I drove back to the store and called my wife from the pay phone.  I told her to call my pager number in five minutes, stay on the line, and let it keep ringing.  I drove back to the jobsite and listened for the telltale buzzing.  I listened in each concrete block cell, but nothing.  I walked in ever widening circles around the house.  Then I heard the pager off in the distance.  Fifty feet away, in the tall grass (going towards the dog’s house), I found my pager.  I had to go back to the pay phone to call my wife to tell her the happy ending to the story.  But I had wasted an hour of my time and two quarters at the payphone.  But I had my precious pager in my hand.  I felt like the woman in the parable who had lost one of her ten silver coins.  Jesus said in Luke 15:9, “And when she hath found it, she calleth her friends and her neighbours together, saying, Rejoice with me; for I have found the piece which I had lost.”  I didn’t call all of my neighbors, but I did call my wife.  And I did keep a better watch out for the black lab.