Where Thieves Break In and Steal

One Sunday night back when we lived in Anchorage, sometime in the night or early morning, a thief entered my car. After checking a couple of compartments in the front (which were left open), he or she grabbed my collection of coupons and coffee stamp cards (along with a few dollars) which had been stuffed into the coin trey of my center console. The thief then probably noticed that I had left my laptop bag in the back seat, and, taking that, fled without taking anything else, leaving the front door slightly open.

When I came out in the morning and saw my car door slightly open, I assumed that I had failed to close it and was thankful that the battery wasn’t dead; we were planning on leaving for an overnight trip. When I first got in, I didn’t notice that the two compartments were open. After we were about an hour down the road, I finally noticed my missing coupons and accused my wife (sorry hun!). It was then that I put two and two together and realized that someone had entered the car. A few more miles down the road, and it hit me: I couldn’t remember bringing in my laptop the night before.

After a sleepless night (partially due to worry and partially due to the fact that the bed was very uncomfortable in the little cabin we’d rented and there were no blackout curtains like we had at home to protect us from the midnight sun), we returned home. After checking every place the laptop could have been, I came to the inevitable conclusion: the thief had made off with my laptop and a few other less important items. Then came waves of grief and worry as I remembered what was on the laptop and the thumb drive in the laptop case with it: tax information (including social security numbers), along with sermons, Bible classes, and articles that were not backed up. Then I remembered what I didn’t have: a serial number or even the name of which model my computer was. I was woefully unprepared to lose my computer this way. The fruit of a year or so of work was gone and my identity (along with my wife’s and first son’s) had been compromised. And for what? The laptop was two years old, well used, and not very good to begin with; the thief would have done well to get $100 out of it. I would have given him or her more just to get it back, but that’s not the way that it works.

When something is stolen from you, you experience a lot of different emotions: grief over what is lost, anger over the injustice of a crime that will almost certainly go unpunished (my laptop was never recovered), self-anger over all of the unanswerable questions and if’s (Did I lock my car that night? If only I had taken my laptop in, etc.), fear (will my house be targeted next?), and just plain sadness. It is easy not to stop and count your blessings, to think about what's been stolen and not about what you still have.

Jesus told us, “Do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy and where thieves break in and steal; but lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust destroys and where thieves do not break in and steal” (Matthew 6:19-20). The fact is that we live in a place where thieves break in and steal. They did in Jesus’ time, and they still do today. In fact, they will until Jesus returns “as a thief in the night” (1 Thessalonians 5:2; 2 Peter 3:10).  

If my laptop hadn’t been stolen, it could have stopped working any number of different ways: wear and tear, a child pouring water on it (one of ours actually poured coffee on my wife’s), me dropping it, etc. It could have burned up in a house fire, or, due to faulty wiring or some defect, caused a house fire. Jesus’ words were not only meant to remind us that things could be stolen, but that the things of this world are totally impermanent. It is foolish and futile to try to cling to them.

Instead of grieving over my loss, I should have prayed. I should have prayed for God to give the wisdom to set more fully my affections on things above. While my Savior understands my emotions (Hebrews 4:15), I understand now that my feelings reflected my need to grow. I should have prayed for God to use me to create a community where there are less thieves and more Christians. I should have prayed for that thief. That heart must have been pretty dark to see that laptop case beneath a child’s car seat and not care about a family that would suffer loss; that heart desperately needed and perhaps still needs the light of the gospel. I should have prayed and offered thanks for all of the things that I still had – the many possessions that I still owned temporarily (as all earthly possessing is temporary) and the eternal treasure that awaits me in heaven.

Yes, we live in a world “where thieves break in and steal.” Thank God for a future home where this will never happen and for the knowledge that we are being actively kept for a future kept for us which can never be stolen: “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who according to His abundant mercy has begotten us again… to an inheritance incorruptible and undefiled and that does not fade away, reserved in heaven for you, who are kept by the power of God through faith for salvation ready to be revealed in the last time” (1 Peter 1:3-5)

-Patrick Swayne  
patrick@tftw.org