A few weeks ago, I was on our back patio with my one-and-a-half-year-old son, Huck, sharpening my reel mower. After grinding the blades against the cutting bar, I began reassembling this simple machine. However, when I went to grab the wheel retaining clip (a small C-shaped piece), it was missing from where I had set it. With a sinking feeling in my gut, I calmly asked Huck if he knew what had happened to it. To my chagrin, he animatedly jumped up, ran to the grass at the edge of the patio, and made a throwing motion into the grass. I immediately recognized that I had been foolish to set all those tempting small parts down on the ground with my curious toddler playing nearby, and I recognized my fault. Because the grass had gotten tall and the sun was setting, I wasn’t able to simply see the sun glinting off the greasy metal clip, so I thought I’d try again another day. A few days later, I took my magnetic wand and began passing over the edge where our patio meets the grass, not expecting to find anything but doing my due diligence before trying to order this discontinued part. After about 30 seconds of leisurely waving the magnet over the grass like a metal detector in search of treasure, I heard a subtle click. As I raised the magnet upward, there it was—my lost part! While this story is truly insignificant, I recount it because it gave me some small sense of how the woman in today’s parable felt when she finally found her lost coin. How much more joy should we experience when we see a lost person finally find forgiveness and eternal hope in Jesus!
Pastor Mike