Categories: the-parable-of
Date: 05 September 2008 16:20:44
... the Oyster Card. In case you don't know, this is the clever little electronic thingy that lets people travel for less on London Transport.
So.. Behold, there was a woman who had an Oyster card. And lo, she had it yesterday and definitely came home on the bus with it. But now, the next day, it was nowhere to be seen. It wasn't in her raincoat pocket. It wasn't in her jacket pocket. It wasn't in her handbag, or on the telephone table. It wasn't on the kitchen shelf with the Tesco vouchers she had taken out of her pocket. It wasn't in her jeans pocket.
Eventually, being in a hurry, she picked up her husband's Oyster card and went out with that. On boarding the bus, however, she thought the little plastic card wallet felt suspiciously light, and lo, there was no card in it, for her husband had taken to putting it in his wallet. So she walked home again from the bus stop, and searched yet again around the house, but no, it was not there. So she took the bloody car, fuming about the fact that she would have to find out the Oyster website, and what her card number was, in order to cancel it, and she wouldn't find that in her emails because she'd just emptied the trash including her last email from Oyster telling her that her card had been automatically topped up. And since she was on auto top up, whoever found or had stolen her card could be merrily travelling all over London and spending her money freely. And of course she would also have to buy a new card, and register it, and put it on auto top up.
However, she went to the relaxation day and did her best to relax, and she went to the counsellor and poured out her troubles, and eventually she went home. And looked in the same places again. And then suddenly, behold it occured to her that she might not have been wearing her jeans the day before, but might have worn her Austrian walking trousers. So she looked in the pocket of the walking trousers and lo! what did she find but her Oyster card. And she rejoiced mightily, and told everyone about it on Facebook and on her blog.
And will not God so rejoice over a single sinner who was lost, and is found?