The loss you have sustained is heavy upon your heart, and it is not a small thing that your car, which served as shelter and means of honest labor, has been taken from you with all your earthly goods. Yet consider this: if in the biting cold of such a providence you feel the sharp need of a restoring hand, that very sense of destitution may be the furrow into which the Lord is dropping the seed of hope. The great Potter has you upon the wheel, and though His work pains you, it is not the work of one who casts away the clay as worthless. He who restored to Peter the joy of his salvation after a bitter fall, and who ever lives to seek and to save that which is lost, can restore to you not only what was taken but something far better, a nearer walk with Himself in the furnace of affliction.
Do not think that this stroke has fallen without the notice of Him who counts the hairs of your head. The Son of Man came to seek and to save the lost, and in His tender might He stoops to our material sorrows as truly as to our spiritual wanderings. It may be that some part of your heart had begun to lean too heavily upon that frail shelter, forgetting that here we have no continuing city. Yet the Lord does not afflict willingly, but that He may bring you to say, "I am poor material for the potter’s skill, but exercise Your long-suffering and go on with Your work of grace until You have made me a vessel fit for Your use." Cry to Him with holy longing, and though you can get no further than desire, be grateful for that desire, for it is a plant that never grew in nature’s soil, it is of His own sowing.
Meanwhile, see that you do not let this trial sap the diligence of your hands. He who worked in Paul to will and to do did not exempt him from laboring and striving; where the Holy Spirit works, He makes men work. While you wait upon God for the recovery of what is lost, be found about your lawful calling as far as strength and means allow, trusting that the Providence which permitted the loss knows when to roll away the reproach. And mark this for your comfort: the Lord Jesus shows peculiar interest in one lost soul, and by extension, in every detail that concerns that soul’s welfare upon the earth. He who sought the one stray sheep until He found it will not despise your cry for that which, being lost, makes your daily bread more difficult to obtain.
Let this calamity drive you closer to the cross, where the look of Christ can work a restoration far deeper than the return of any vehicle. If you have grown cold in your first love, or if the outward forms of faith have been neglected amidst the press of daily cares, now is the accepted time to seek His face with tears. The Lord can restore the years that the locust has eaten; He can bring you back from a sense of desolation as though you had never been cast aside. And when He has again put a new song in your mouth, you will go forth to the straying and the suffering with a tender heart, able to say, "Do not wander; there is no good in it. Come back to Him, there is such peace, such rest with Him." Your present wound may become your credential for healing others.
At the close of the day, it will be sweet to say, "I have brought some lost one home," or "I held fast under trial and saw the Lord’s delivering hand." Seek not merely the car, but the face of the Car-Giver. Lay your petition before Him with importunity, and then leave it there, for He is faithful that promised. The night is far spent, but you must work while it is day, trusting Him to supply what is needful for the body even as He has supplied all for the soul.