She tossed the mattress aside. No! Still not there! She needed that coin. A panicky feeling started to grip her heart, but she fought the feeling with a few reassuring breaths.
Breathe In. Out. In. Out.
A coin doesn't just get up and walk into the night.
She needed to retrace her steps. Closing her eyes, she thought about the previous night. She had come home from the market with a two new silver coins. She had dumped the leather pouch onto the mattress in order to count how many pieces of silver she had now. She remembered counting the ten coins, and then using her hand to sweep the coins towards the edge of the mattress and into the pouch.
One must have fallen off the mattress and rolled away.
Grabbing a broom by the side of the door, she started to carefully sweep every inch of the little house, hoping to coax the coin out of hiding.
Still no coin. She had swept almost the entire house, and was about ready to tear the house apart, piece by piece in order to find this coin to provide for her family. She plunged the broom beneath a table.
Something rolled between her feet. Dropping the broom, she fell to her knees and pawed frantically for the wayward coin.
There! She clutched the coin to her chest, and heaved a sigh of relief. She had found what was missing.
Based on Luke 15:8-10
“Or what woman, having ten silver coins, if she loses one coin, does not light a lamp and sweep the house and seek diligently until she finds it? And when she has found it, she calls together her friends and neighbors, saying, ‘Rejoice with me, for I have found the coin that I had lost.’ Just so, I tell you, there is joy before the angels of God over one sinner who repents.” Luke 15:8-10
So I was reading this chapter a few weeks ago, and I was thinking about how this is kind of viewed as the "lost get found" chapter. You have the lost sheep, the lost coin, and the prodigal (lost) son. I think we most often think of these parables in the context that we were lost, and God found us. Good and true, but I wanted to look at the parable of the lost coin a little differently today.
What if we flipped it? Instead of thinking that we are the coin, and God hunts through the house trying to find us, what if it's the other way around? What if God is that treasure, and we are the ones hunting for Him?
No, God's not lost, but sometimes people don't know where to look for Him. Sometimes people look in all the places they would expect to find fulfillment - God. Maybe you look to relationships. Maybe you look to your work to fulfill you. Maybe you look to your family to be everything you need. Maybe you put your faith in yourself.
But you don't find God in any of those places.
Do you feel like something is missing? You're one coin short. It's time to do a thorough sweep in your heart's home. The woman in the parable had nine other coins, but she wouldn't stop looking until she had everything she needed. All that she had originally. We were made to crave and seek God, but society has taught us to fight that feeling. Instead we are supposed to be content with what we have, but you will never be content until you have found that last coin - God.
"That they should seek God, and perhaps feel their way toward him and find him. Yet he is actually not far from each one of us, for 'In him we live and move and have our being'; as even some of your own poets have said, 'For we are indeed his offspring.'" Acts 17:27-28
"You will seek me and find me, when you seek me with all your heart." Jeremiah 29:13
Are you like that woman, diligently seeking God, not resting until you find Him? The coin missing from your life is God, and He's waiting to be found!
V. Joy Palmer
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