I’VE just found a packet of sweating grated cheese in the tea towel drawer. I bought it five days ago, but for some reason – possibly distracted by one of the little people (and there are many of them) in my house – it never made its rightful cold destination.

This is normal for me. On one occasion I fished out a pair of goggles, a £2 coin and a box of Ibuprofen from the washing machine. The first two items survived but the tablets dissolved into the clothes.

The machine, no doubt overloaded with the stress of washing for seven bodies, obviously needed the pain killers.

As a mother I’m expected to know where everything is: the homework sheets, the sunhats, the one inch hat for a tiny doll, the hairbrush, the cuddly toy which hasn’t been seen for years, the pen with the spots on it and the multi-coloured bouncy ball that was in a party bag. Every day I seem to be looking for something. But in hunting, inevitably I find important items that have been missing for awhile – notably children’s long-overdue library books or the spare car key.

In the busyness, demands and trials of life, we can feel like our peace and hope is lost. We can wonder if there is a God who cares about the load we are carrying, we look for Him and can’t find Him and our prayers seem to hit a brick wall. But in my experience God reveals Himself when we least expect it, prayers are answered in a way we didn’t anticipate and looking back we realise He was there all along. Jesus says: ‘Seek and you will find.’ Often we don’t find because we are looking in the wrong place.