The Hunt for Gloria

There is a girl here who is hungry for something. That thing is chocolate. She craves it and will eat it whenever it is placed in front of her. There is something else she is hungry for, but she can't put a name to it.

Rodney was given a box of Kinder Sorpresa by someone here in Costa Rica. It's basically a hollow choclate egg that has a toy on the inside (See image below). Inside these particular eggs were all tiny figurines from the movie Madagascar.

One afternoon a group of young people came up from Los Anonos for dinner. One of the girls said she absolutely LOVES chocolate. It is her favorite. She will always eat it and craves it all the time. Rodney decided to pull out an egg for each of us. Each of our eggs contained a different one of nine figurines. In looking on the box, one of the girls fell in love with the hippo figurine, of which none of us had gotten. So it was decided that we should each have another egg in hopes of getting this one character. We each got duplicates of characters we already had. The next day we decided to try again to find the illusive hippo, but to no avail...It soon became an all out hunt to find the hippo, and every time this girl would come for a meal, at the end of the meal Rodney would pull out several more boxes of chocolates to hunt through. Each time we were sure we would find Gloria the Hippo. Well, 4 days and some 30 odd boxes of chocolates later, the hippo was still no where to be found. None of us wanted to give up, sure that we would find it, knowing how important it had become to this girl to find it. And we tried everything: going to the bottom of the box, taking from the middle of the box, from the top, random places. We tried it.  In the mean time, some of the chocolate was also shared at a kid's birthday party. During women's Bible study, several kids were sitting around playing with the toys they had gotten from the party when low and behold out of the corner of my eye I see one of the boys playing with the HIPPO!!!! I couldn't believe it! There is was! None of our 30 plus boxes had it, but here, randomly, was the hippo! But did this child know the importance of the hippo? Appreciate the search we had made for it? At the end of the Bible study I approached the child, and using all sorts of strategery, convinced the child to trade the hippo for a pencil. (Low, I know, but super effective. I made the pencil to be much cooler than it was, but that's beside the point). The point was I got it. With hippo in hand, I couldn't wait to share the good news with every one!!! The next day the opportunity had come to make the big reveal. Everyone knew the hippo had been found except the girl. After lunch we went through the usual routine of everyone getting a box. The hippo hid securely in my pocket. Our plan was to all open our boxes, not find a single hippo, and then have the hippo make a magical appearance out of now where. Which would have worked, except TWO MORE HIPPOS WERE IN THE BOXES!!! The girl got her hippo and everyone was thrilled to see the joy on her face at the abundance of hippos she actually got.

So what is the point of this story? When there is something we want, we will desperately seek after it. We are often willing to go to extreme measures or risk looking ridiculous to get what is important to us. It may seem like the odds are like winning the lotto, like it may never be found or won. But when we put our whole heart into it, and surround ourselves with people who encourage us in our search, what we seek will be found. I believe the same is true in a spiritual sense as well. When something is very important to us and we desperately seek the Lord for whatever we need, He will answer us. How many of us desperately seek Him, though, go day after day after day seeking, asking, searching, knocking? How many of us have our spiritual eyes open to see that exactly what we're seeking and asking for is not in the box at all, but there none the less, in an unexpected place, at a totally unexpected time? And how much more does the Lord want to bless us even more abundantly than we could have asked for in the first place? Luke 11 says:

 ⁵Then he said to them, "Suppose one of you has a friend, and he goes to him at midnight and says, 'Friend, lend me three loaves of bread, ⁶because a friend of mine on a journey has come to me, and I have nothing to set before him.'
 ⁷"Then the one inside answers, 'Don't bother me. The door is already locked, and my children are with me in bed. I can't get up and give you anything.' ⁸I tell you, though he will not get up and give him the bread because he is his friend, yet because of the man's boldness^[e] he will get up and give him as much as he needs.
 ⁹"So I say to you: Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you. ¹⁰For everyone who asks receives; he who seeks finds; and to him who knocks, the door will be opened.
 ¹¹"Which of you fathers, if your son asks for^[f] a fish, will give him a snake instead? ¹²Or if he asks for an egg, will give him a scorpion? ¹³If you then, though you are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him!"