Leaving the Laptop

 

For the mountains shall depart,

and the hills be removed;

but my kindness shall not depart from thee,

neither shall the covenant of my peace be removed,

saith the LORD that hath mercy on thee.

-- Isaiah 54:10

 

           

A friend of a friend is a Midwesterner nurturing a new small business. The recent nosedive in the economy has been extra tough. He had to lay off some people, and it nearly killed him. He had to cash in his IRA to stay afloat.

 

One day last week was extra stressful. He'd flown to New York City for an important meeting, and then went to a restaurant to meet an old friend for dinner. He lugged his carry-on bag and laptop with him. But he got a text message from the friend saying he'd given him the wrong address. The right restaurant was four blocks away.

 

So he gathered back up his stuff, hailed a cab, and rode over there in the hustle bustle of the big city on a cold, rainy night.

 

They pulled up to the restaurant. He grabbed his stuff, paid the cabbie, jumped out, and headed to the door . . .

 

. . . but just as he got there, he realized HIS LAPTOP WAS IN THE CAB!!!

 

He spun around to see the cab rolling away in traffic. Everything went into slow motion: he ran after it, but couldn't catch it. He shouted and waved his arms:

 

"Hey! HEY!! HEYYYYYYY!!!!!"

 

But his pleas were unheard. The cab disappeared into the rainy night.

 

He felt sick. And not just because of the replacement cost.

 

EVERYTHING was on that laptop. Know the feeling? His business stuff was backed up at home, but he hadn't backed up many of the 5,000 photos stored on the laptop, including the ones from a recent family trip to London, Paris and Ireland. Those photos were precious documentation of what he had been doing with his life over the past several years.

 

And now they were gone. Gone! Uncharacteristically, he didn't even have a receipt or a cab number. But he was a man of action! He would get that laptop back somehow.

 

Standing in the rainy vestibule, he started making phone calls to cab companies, police precincts, every place he could think of. No luck. He skipped dinner, went back to his hotel and kept calling for five hours. Fruitless.

 

In resignation, at 1:30 a.m., he fell asleep.

 

A half-hour later, his hotel phone rang. It was a stranger with a foreign accent:

 

"Is this Mr. Shawn? You will not mind my calling at this hour. I have your laptop!"

 

It was the cabbie. He'd found it right away, with the hotel reservation printout tucked in the bag. His shift had ended, and he offered to bring it right over. The businessman was flabbergasted at his good fortune.

 

The cabbie was originally from Argentina, where the businessman's grandfather had grown up.  He had been in New York City for 30 years. He was startled when the businessman gave him a great, big bear hug of thanks. And when he opened his wallet and emptied every cent he had, $130, into the cabbie's hands as a tip, he was even more surprised.

 

But I'm not surprised.

 

See, our mutual friend says that businessman is the most wonderful, ethical, honest, hard-working, thoughtful, fastidious, generous, obedient Christian she knows.

 

So I called him to find out how his faith figured in this incident. Yes, he cried a little and prayed a lot. In fact, he says he prays all day, every day, about everything he can think of. He totally trusts God. Even if he hadn't gotten his laptop back, he would have trusted Him.

 

He described how he applies his prayer life to his business life: "You listen a little, and follow, and listen and follow, listen and follow."

 

Well, he communes closely with a God Who answers prayers by engineering solutions. And He does it in intricate detail. God fixed it so that, if this man in a moment of stress had left his precious laptop in a cab, it would "by coincidence" be the cab of an honest driver, who probably needed that $130 tip as much as the businessman needed to be reminded once again that God was with him in every way, every day.

 

And getting the laptop back wasn't the only encouragement. As a result of that nearly-disastrous trip, he got 10 new orders. Things are looking better for his company. He's smiling again.

 

No, the laptop incident wasn't life and death. There wasn't a lot of money at stake. But we've all been in those straw-that-breaks-a-camel's-back situations.

 

And recovering the laptop restored his equilibrium, and put a spring back in his step.

 

So here's the bottom line:

 

No matter what, a guy like that can never really lose anything. That's because the LORD has downloaded kindness, mercy and peace into him, as a believer.

 

He's living life in the best possible place . . . on top of the world, in the lap of the living God. †