My sweet Mom has a thing for purses, and another thing for purses being constantly with her.  As in, she almost takes hers to bed and sleeps with it.  Where she is, the purse is – and not just with her, but on her arm.  We have had many laughs over the fact that she would NEVER have her purse stolen unless they took her too!

However.  That all came to a crashing halt on Wednesday.  She was taking two of her friends to see an elderly woman in a nursing home.  Mind you, my Mom is 75, and her friends are 78 and 81, respectively – but they were there to see “an elderly” friend!  Anyway one of the friends was in the passenger seat with Mom driving, and she needed help getting out.  My mom, in her haste to keep her friend from falling, threw her keys into her purse, shoved it into the floorboard, and ran to the passenger side to help….and, you guessed it, forgot about her purse.  First time ever.  And 15 minutes – just 15 minutes – later, she rushed to the car, and it was gone. Totally, 100%, stolen, and of course, her entire identity with it.  Checkbook, phone, credit/debit cards, house keys, car keys, EVERYTHING.

So the rest of this week has been an unending saga of anxiety, frustration, guilt, depression, anger, you name it, we’ve been there.  And as we slowly repair all the damage, she is feeling a little better – but we have miles of red tape, etc. to go.  Her one constant comment through all this has been, “that was ALSO in my purse!!” as she inventories stuff she’s missing.

As we have been sorting through all this, the Lord reminded me that there is a much bigger identity theft happening in this world….and no, it’s not the one you are probably thinking of.  There is only ONE thief involved, and his name is satan.  He is ruthless, as I Peter 5:8 says, “…your adversary the devil walks about like a roaring lion, seeking whom he may devour.”  From lost people, he steals the ability to recognize their sin and their need for a Savior.  From the children of God, he steals joy, peace, happiness, freedom, and the ability to recognize the true power and promise they have through the blood of Jesus.  And the consequences of both those thefts is far above and beyond what my Mom has faced this week.

The point of this?  As we live in this crazy, mad world, we should definitely do our best to protect our “earthly” identity and not make ourselves vulnerable to being a statistic.  HOWEVER…we should do MORE to protect our spiritual identities – and maybe for a lot of us, it’s time we took an inventory to see what’s missing!