Skip to main content

Lost Coin

             Or suppose a woman has ten silver coins and loses one. Doesn’t she light a lamp, sweep the house and search carefully until she finds it? And when she finds it, she calls her friends and neighbors together and says, ‘Rejoice with me; I have found my lost coin.’ (Matthew 15:8-9)

 

          Beethoven once wrote a piece of music about his rage over a lost penny: Beethoven - Rage Over a Lost Penny [60k special] - Bing video. In today’s passage, Jesus talks about a woman’s joy at finding a lost coin. According to the study notes, the coin in question was worth about one-tenth of a day’s wages, so at $15/hour and an eight-hour day, we’re talking about a coin worth $12, not $0.10 or $0.25. But Jesus still makes it clear that the value we’re talking about isn’t much. It's not the value of the coin nearly so much as the fact that it’s lost that is the story's focus.

          But what impresses me today is that Jesus didn’t make light of the value of the missing item. He didn’t laugh at how foolish the woman was about being upset over the loss of a coin. “I mean, it’s a coin, for crying out loud! It’s not like she lost her arm or her life!”

          Today, as I suffer through yet another day of illness, I continue to think in terms of “I mean, it’s just a cold for crying out loud! It’s not like I’ve lost my arm or my life!” How trivial I am. How embarrassing to God. I should be out there doing… something or everything. And I suspect that a third to a half of the population suffers from this same guilt syndrome and the attached corollaries – either everything will fall apart without us, or they’ll discover how little they need us. 

          But Jesus doesn’t seem to chide people for having only a little of anything except faith. Illness doesn’t bother Him. Poverty isn’t a problem. Even death is a minor detail. So tonight, having “wasted” the whole day, I’m trying to figure out how to bask in the compassion and love of the Father despite my failure, disability, illness, or lost coin.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The List

              Therefore, since we have been justified through faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ,   through whom we have gained access by faith into this grace in which we now stand. And we boast in the hope of the glory of God. Not only so, but we also glory in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance;   perseverance, character; and character, hope. And hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured out into our hearts through the Holy Spirit, who has been given to us. (Romans 5:1-5)           Think about it. We have been justified. At least, we could be justified if we stopped insisting that our justification be based on our merits. We have peace with God, or could have peace if we stopped throwing temper tantrums. We have gained access into grace i...
Post a Comment
Read more

Meditations of the Heart

  May these words of my mouth and this meditation of my heart be pleasing in your sight, Lord, my Rock and my Redeemer. (Psalm19:14)           As I started writing this post, I noted that the meditations of my heart are all over the mental landscape, from a hub where eight superhighways come together to a lunar or nuclear landscape. Do you see my error? The moment I read the word meditation , I think about thoughts. But what’s described here is the meditations of our hearts ; our wills.           While the meditations of our minds may be all over the place, the meditations of our wills tend to be a little more stable by the time we are adults. We no longer tend to want to pursue the ten separate careers we did in any given day as children. Part of this is humble acceptance of reality. We come to understand that we can’t do it all. I think another part of it is disappointmen...
Post a Comment
Read more

The Shepherd!

                 “I am the good shepherd; I know my sheep and my sheep know me— just as the Father knows me and I know the Father—and I lay down my life for the sheep . (John 10:14) God said to Moses, “I am who I am. This is what you are to say to the Israelites: ‘I am has sent me to you.’” (Genesis 3:14) The Lord is my shepherd, I lack nothing. He makes me lie down in green pastures, he leads me beside quiet waters, he refreshes my soul. He guides me along the right paths     for his name’s sake. Even though I walk     through the darkest valley, I will fear no evil,     for you are with me; your rod and your staff,     they comfort me. (Psalm 23:1-4) For the Jews, it was politically incorrect to make claims about yourself as a teacher (or possibly as anything else.) Teachers were expected to take pride in the...
Post a Comment
Read more