I have been working on a project with a friend for some time now, and at various intervals, she has given me contributions to the project. Many times when she gives me something it is in a brown envelope. One of the things that she gave me was a package of pictures. After talking about it, she decided that she didn’t want to use those pictures, so she asked for them back.

I went to get them to give back to her, and I could not find them anywhere. I looked where I keep the rest of the project, and they were not there. I looked to see if they had accidentally gotten in with other projects I was working on and could not find them anywhere. It was if that brown envelope of pictures had disappeared.

I apologized and told my friend that I knew that they were somewhere in my house and that I would find them eventually. After I looked everywhere they should be, I started looking all the places they shouldn’t be, like under the bed and behind the shelf, still no luck. I was driving myself crazy, so I finally stopped looking for them.

The other day I was straightening up, and there were the pictures laying almost in plain view, inches away from me every day. The problem was they were not in a brown envelope. I hadn’t been looking in the wrong place all this time; I was looking for the wrong thing.

Sometimes we miss what we are looking for because it comes in a different package than what we were expecting. It doesn’t look like what we thought it would. Our blessings are not always how we would have designed them, but they are there.

Our lives may not look like we thought it would but God is faithful, and he pours out his blessings on us. If we are not careful, we may overlook the ones nearest to us searching for something we think we are missing.

“For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways,” declares the LORD. (Isaiah 55:8) (NIV)