The Blue Cookie

For Christmas my daughter got a set of wooden cookies from her aunt and uncle. They have cookie bases with frosting tops that connect with Velcro. The cookies came with a cookie sheet, an oven mitt, a knife, and a spatula. All together it was a wonderful gift for a two-year-old girl who loves to help her mama bake.

I’m not sure when I first heard about the Blue Cookie, but I know I fully became aware of it after it was lost. “It’s like this one,” my wife told me, holding up a chocolate frosting topper with a yellow swirl, “but the swirl is blue. It’s her favorite one.” This quickly became apparent to me as my daughter wandered around the house saying, “Uh-oh Blue Cookie…” for several days.

Tug on Daddy’s arm, “Uh-oh Blue Cookie.”

Sit on Mama’s lap, “Uh-oh Blue Cookie.”

One day our friend Ashton came over to spend time with my daughter, “Blue Cookie lost.”

When asked by Ashton where the Blue Cookie was she responded, “Um, room. Um, couch. Um, outside.” In short, all the places we had looked for it and not found it.

We searched everywhere for the Blue Cookie as though it were the Holy Grail (and it kind of felt lost like the Holy Grail). Every time anyone came to our house they got to hear about the Blue Cookie. It seemed ever present in my daughter’s mind. It’s amazing how much we also thought about the Blue Cookie, but that’s often how it is with things that are lost. It did not matter that we still had the yellow swirl cookie or several sprinkle cookies, because none of them were the Blue Cookie. I thought this would become the legend of our family, a story to be told for years about the Lost Blue Cookie.

Then one day, playing in the living room, my wife and daughter pulled up the couch cushions once more and there sitting in a crack in the couch… “I find it!” exclaimed my daughter. She came running into the dining room where I was, “I find it!” she shouted at me. “What did you find?” I asked. “Blue Cookie!”

No longer the Lost Blue Cookie, it had become the Found Blue Cookie.

For days afterward she joyously told everyone, “Blue Cookie! Couch!”

She carried it around everywhere for several days and it still gets special attention whenever it is spotted. She still gets so much joy from the Blue Cookie.

It reminded me of a parable that Jesus told in Luke 15:8-10, “Or suppose a woman has ten silver coins and loses one. Doesn’t she light a lamp, sweep the house and search carefully until she finds it? And when she finds it, she calls her friends and neighbors together and says, ‘Rejoice with me; I have found my lost coin.’ In the same way, I tell you, there is rejoicing in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner who repents.”

This is what it is like when we turn from God. He searches for us, watches for us, thinks about us, and calls out for us. And so it is when we turn from our sin towards God. He rejoices over us, like my daughter rejoicing over the Blue Cookie.