Gracious Father, I come to You now to be restored in You, renewed in You and I open my heart to receive all the grace, mercy and provision from You that I so desperately need this day! I come to Your Word by faith, trusting You have gifts for me so graciously given by Your Holy Spirit! Amen! The scripture text for today is from Luke 15! “8 “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? 9 And when she finds it, she calls her friends and neighbors together and says, ‘Rejoice with me; I have found my lost coin.’ 10 In the same way, I tell you, there is rejoicing in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner who repents.”
This little story from Jesus reminds me a great deal of the story mentioned last Sunday when Jesus talked about a pearl of great value whose finder sold everything he had to buy it. Here Jesus seems to illustrate the same thing about the heart of God for us – for His people. We are valuable and priceless to Him. We are lost but then found! There is great rejoicing when the reunion is made.
It helps me to remember the line that introduces us to Jesus’ motivation for this little story. In 15:1-3 Luke writes, “Now the tax collectors and sinners were all gathering around to hear Jesus. 2 But the Pharisees and the teachers of the law muttered, “This man welcomes sinners and eats with them.” 3 Then Jesus told them this parable:
Jesus is illustrating something very powerful about the heart of God! He rejoices over broken, sinful people who come to Him - people who are lost and for whom He is searching. He rejoices over us as we come to Him. We are the lost coin and He is the woman searching. He is not satisfied with those He already has – the nine coins – He is on the hunt for the one still lost.
As I am writing, a new thought just struck me. I will cross paths with literally hundreds if not thousands of people today who are “lost coins”! How is their Father in heaven now looking for them – seeking the lost one? How is the Father doing that now?
Perhaps that is my role! As a child of God I get to live in my world today with the heart of my Father – realizing there is a great deal of lostness around me! Maybe my Father is reaching out through me today to find a lost coin. Perhaps He is saying to me, “Open your eyes wide today delton, look at people through My lens – see the lost coins- join Me on My coin retrieval mission!”
Now that sends me off today with an exciting, unpredictable and adventurous purpose for my life today!
WOW!
delton