My ring is very special to me (for obvious reasons) and so my heart sank in my chest as the more I looked, the more I couldn’t see it. I ended up getting down on hands and knees to search for it. After a lot of moving things around, I finally saw the glint of silver that told me where my ring was and a huge wave of relief crashed down on me.
Have you ever lost anything important to you? How did you feel?
Did you find it again? How did that feel?
As I was looking for my ring, I remembered a parable that Jesus told about a woman who also lost something important to her. This is what the Bible says:
“Suppose a woman has ten silver coins, but she loses one of them. She will take a light and clean the house. She will look carefully for the coin until she finds it. And when she finds it, she will call her friends and neighbours and say to them, ‘Be happy with me because I have found the coin that I lost!’ In the same way, it’s a happy time for the angels of God when one sinner decides to change.”
Luke 15:8 – 10
Parables are a picture – a glimpse of what the kingdom of heaven is like. In this story, the coin was very special to the woman, even though she had 9 more of them. She didn’t give it up for lost but instead searched and searched until she found it.
Jesus was showing us how God doesn’t give up on us too. Even though there are billions of people on our planet, He reaches out to each of us individually and the whole of heaven celebrates when one person decides to follow Him.
There are no ‘forgotten coins’ in the kingdom of God, and I wonder if that’s something you need to hear today? The world can seem so big, and there are so many voices jostling to be heard. Especially online which is a world we’re all getting plugged into more and more now. And with some friends and family feeling far away in lockdown, it can be tempting to feel alone and left behind.
But that’s not what the Bible says about us. We don’t have a God who is forgetful or uncaring about His creation. His character is one full of faithfulness – and He never gives up on us. We might choose to walk away from Him, and that is a choice that we can make, but He always calls us to Him and searches for us. In fact, the same person who told that story, Jesus, is Son of God who died on the cross for us. So that anyone who decides to change their heart and trust in Him can come to God and be found and rejoiced over.
So next time you drop something, or lose something precious and then find it – why not remember this story. Think about how you feel in that moment – that’s a picture of how God feels about us. Not because of what we’re like, because we change and make mistakes and do things we regret, but because of what He is like. He never gives up and He loves us so much He gave us Jesus.
Photo by Jordan Rowland on Unsplash