Faith: Eternally thankful for having the best Shepherd

You’ve heard, no doubt, of the legendary search for the holy grail.

In everything from tales of medieval knights, legends of King Arthur, the movie Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, and even Monty Python satirical sketches, the grail, supposedly the cup or chalice from which Jesus drank at the Last Supper, has been a precious object searched for, longed for, even lusted for.

I don’t have space to describe it, but who can ever forget the great movie scene and the driest of all lines of dry wit, “He chose poo-oo-rly.”

The grail turned out not to be a golden and jewel-encrusted goblet but a modest wooden vessel well-suited for a carpenter. (Search for “He chose poorly” on YouTube and you can watch the scene. Wait for the end. Never has a villain been more justly dispatched or an actor better delivered a three-word line.)

For anyone with at least half a brain, it’s all the fun stuff of great stories and legend. But for more than a few serious searchers over the years — some of whom have claimed to actually find it — the search has been, well, serious.

Some have searched for the grail as a priceless (meaning incredibly pricey) object. Some with, I think, religious fervor that should be saved for the Lord who drank from it and not the cup itself, have searched for it as a matter of some sort of quest smacking more of magic than faith. No surprise. Some folks would go nuts and pay big bucks to see or even (gasp) own, or build a church around, a bunion that a Professor Froogdable (mail order doctorate from Archaeology Associates Unlimited) asserts is “very likely,” based on his best research, from the base of John the Baptist’s left big toe.

Ah, well. I’ve been on a search myself lately. And I admit that it’s become a bit of a quest. I’ve become a little despondent about it and, I confess, pretty much given up. But sometime, some day, perhaps years in the future (maybe aided by someone like Professor Froogdable), someone is going to discover, shoved into a dark corner of a warehouse a fairly large dusty and by then decaying old box.

In that box will be the three-piece acrylic bathtub wall surround I ordered online weeks ago from a big box DIY home improvement store (the blue place, not the orange place).

The four-piece set was supposed to come in two big boxes. It would take years by Amazon time standards, but, finally, the notification of its arrival arrived in my email.

Yay! It arrived early!

Boo! It was just one box.

One bathtub now installed and waiting waterless and forlorn as my bathroom renovation stalls for lack of three sheets of over-priced plastic. The barcode on the box failed the store and me. They needed a chip, a tracker. And I need patience, which is as lost to me presently as that mysterious box.

I’ve reordered. Amazon, this time. And even they are oozing along at a weeks-long pace on this one. The reviews warn that it will likely arrive chipped, and I’ll have to order yet again. I literally need a shower.

I guess I need a better shipper, but what I’m eternally thankful to have is the best Shepherd. He’s never lost a sheep like me yet.

Curtis Shelburne writes about faith for The Eastern New Mexico News. Contact him at

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