The Woman Who Lost the Coin

She lit a lamp and swept the whole house. She searched carefully until she found it. And when she found it, she called her friends and neighbors: Rejoice with me; I have found my lost coin.

Jesus tells this parable in the same breath as the lost sheep and the prodigal son. Three parables, one theme: God's response to the lost is not passive waiting. It is active, thorough, lamp-lighting, house-sweeping searching.

I love this image of God because it is domestic. It is not a king sending an army or a general dispatching scouts. It is a woman on her hands and knees in her own house, moving furniture, peering into corners, searching every crevice with the focused attention of someone who knows exactly what she has lost and exactly what it is worth.

The coin could not look for her. The coin was simply lost. And the woman searched anyway, because the finding was entirely her initiative and entirely her joy.

I have been the coin. Lost and unable to participate in my own finding. Unable to call back to the voice searching for me. And yet found — because the One searching was not waiting for me to make myself findable.

There is immense comfort in that. Whatever brought you to this page today — confusion, doubt, distance, failure — you are the coin. And the house is being swept.