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It’s the one basket in my house I hate. With a passion. Seriously. Most mothers already know the one I’m talking about before I say anything else. This basket keeps company with other baskets that are almost as despised—baskets filled with laundry often unidentifiable as clean or dirty.

There is no basket of laundry in my home that I ever approach with total adoration, but the sock basket full of its mismatched, sundry socks seems intolerable to me. There are dark socks, tan socks, socks with a million possible matches, and socks that have only one match (but both socks never seem to end up in the basket at the same time.)

There is a pair of Christmas socks that I could swear I have matched and put away until next Christmas, but they keep getting out of the drawer and filtering through the laundry one sock at a time. I’m afraid to throw one of them away for fear the other will show the next day.

There is a tan trouser sock in the basket that belongs to my mother. It’s been there since her last visit in August. I keep thinking I might actually put it in an envelope and mail it to her, but we know that will never happen. I should probably throw it away since she has most certainly thrown away its match that lives in Missouri.

Then, there are the long, navy football socks that we can NEVER find during football season, but they won’t go away the rest of the year. Load after load of clothes seems to give birth to the singular, blue sock that we needed in October but could never find.

There are seven different, black dress socks in the basket that I don’t believe have ever had a match, and I don’t know where they even came from. There are three wool socks intended for the cold that come and go in the basket, not to mention the 23 different shades of white socks that I used to try and match according to ground-in dirt color. I even have two or three girl socks of my nieces that randomly turn up every so often. This is especially strange, because the nieces moved back to Missouri almost two years ago.

But I don’t throw them out. I’m waiting, for what I don’t know, but I’m waiting.

The world sometimes seems like a big sock basket full of people with all kinds of wear and tear and different shades of ground-in life. Some are old, some are new. Some are bright, some are dark. And no matter how full or crazy the basket gets, God throws none of us away.

In the mismatched and lost world of people, God isn’t throwing away, He’s waiting. He’s waiting and hoping that each of us will be matched to Jesus Christ and be saved. Peter writes: “The Lord is not slow in keeping his promise, as some understand slowness. He is patient with you, not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance… Bear in mind that our Lord's patience means salvation” (2 Peter 3:9).

In the sock basket of life, are you missed or matched, lost or found?

"Inspiration For You" from Randy Mitchell

Keep Your Dreams to Yourself