“Rejoicing “Over” One Who is Found”
Recently, I lost my keys. I was panicked to say the least because they were the keys to my office. I checked with Residents I had visited and called restaurants where I had dined but no luck. I visited one establishment I had visited and they had a “lost and found” department and they searched but alas no keys. I asked the attendant, “Do people often come back looking for things they’ve left behind? “All the time,” he said. “Sometimes people return desperately hoping we still have something of theirs that seems to be of little value. Once someone drove for miles to retrieve an open package of sunflower seeds,” he said with a chuckle.
In a single chapter of one of the Gospels Jesus tells back to back stories about things that are lost. Luke 15 describes a lost sheep and a lost child. A shepherd leaves 99 sheep in the security of the sheepfold and goes looking in the wilderness for sheep No. 100, which may not survive the night unless rescued. A brokenhearted father hopes and prays that a runaway son will come to his senses and return home. There is deep emotion behind each of those familiar stories. God seeks the one who is lost.
And then there is that short passage squeezed in about the woman who has ten silver coins and loses one. She sweeps and searches carefully until she finds it. And when she finds it she calls her friends and neighbors together rand says, “Rejoice with me; I have found my lost coin.” In the same way, I tell you there is rejoicing in the presence of the angels of God over one person who repents.
The woman had 10 silver coins. The Greek word here is drachma, which was worth about a day’s wages. But after hours of anxiety she sees the glint of silver and all is well. Jesus seems to be saying that God’s angels are intimately wrapped up in the drama o human salvation. He is desperate to find you. He won’t stop searching. And the angels themselves are rooting for a happy ending.
Who is this God who cares so much about you and me? He’s the Good Shepherd. And the Waiting Father. And the Searching Matriarch who will throw a party the minute she knows you are safe. Whenever you feel stuck, or adrift, or thwarted, or paralyzed, or running away or simply lost in the fog of not knowing what to do next, there is Someone who will always come back to you.
That’s because you yourself are the ultimate treasure worth retrieving.
Faithfully, Ron Naylor, Chaplain