It’s funny some of the things you remember. I remember playing with a dime next to the bright red fire hydrant on the corner of Margin Street and Owen Avenue in Brownsville, Tennessee. I must have been around seven or eight years old. That was sixty years ago. It was across the street and one house up a hill from the house where I grew up. I dropped that dime in the grass. The grass might have been ready for a trim but just barely — not unusually tall. I ran my fingers through the grass, pulled some, and scratched at the dirt. I never found that dime. If any one reading this finds that dime, it’s mine!
As a young man I was working on running some of that flat brown television cable that predates the round black coax cable through an attic. I had a nice petite pearl handled and silver pocket knife. The knife was special to me because it had a slight blemish on the corner of one side and because I bargained for it after noticing that blemish and the purchase was my prize. This was the first time I ever bargained for merchandise at a store. I treasured that knife. I liked to pull it out of my pocket, show it off, and tell the story about how I bargained to get it.
When I got done running the wire, my knife was missing. I remembered sticking it into one of the two by fours. I ran my hands through that itchy attic insulation and to my frustration it eluded my searching fingers. Through the years I lived in that house, every so often, if I needed something stored in the attic, I’d go over to the area where I believed I had lost the knife and look one more time. Years later, after moving to another state, I heard that house had been put on a trailer and moved to an unknown location and I finally gave up hope of ever having that pearl handled silver knife back in my possession.
Jesus tells a story about a woman who lived at a time when any coin was a rarity for a poor person. Most household staples were acquired through barter. She lived in a dirt floored house open to the chickens, sheep and goats. She dropped a valuable coin in the dust. It’s amazing how you can drop a tablet from a prescription medication bottle and it will take a course that a mouse could not have calculated. This coin must have been equipped with artificial intelligence. For she swept the house floor as there was but one room to sweep; but she found that coin and rejoiced because what had been lost had now been found.
Jesus said that all the angels of heaven rejoice when anyone who is lost to God is found. Then Jesus went on to tell one more story to emphasize this teaching. There were three stories in this threefold parable. Jesus had already told about a lost lamb. In the third story it is a son that is lost. The lost son is more valuable than any coin. The lost son is more valuable than any lamb. When a person is lost to God, more than a pearl of great price is missing. When a human being is lost to God, what is much more precious than gold or silver is astray. God is searching for those who are lost and when the lost are found, there is rejoicing in heaven.
Jesus said, “I tell you, in the same way, there is joy in the presence of God’s angels over one sinner who repents” (Luke 15:10).
Stephen Williams