I have found the coin that I had lost

It's the losing that grabs me this morning. What I lost this morning wasn't a silver coin or a sheep but my cool. My patience completely failed me as I tried to get a very reluctant 10 year old ready for outdoor camp - a drizzly grey day after an astoundingly sunny warm week, today, the day there's no school and she's got to spend the day outside - it rains. And her boots don't fit. And everything about everything is wrong. And I haven't had nearly enough caffeine and I snap and yell at her. Gloriously throwing all my prayerfulness and loving patience right out the window. I made her cry. It was awful.

It is a comfort to come to this passage, with all my failure, all my lost-it-ness and find that once again the stories of Jesus know human foibles so well. The parables and disciples don't show a world of perfectly enlightened beings who never screw up. The whole Bible is full of folks messing up like me, quite often worse than I've ever yet failed, and finding, somehow, mercy and redemption.

That at the discovery of the lost coin there is no shame, no blaming, no trying to pretend it didn't happen and that her house was always in perfect order and she never loses anything or that the sheep are all obedient and attentive and that the shepherd never takes his eye off them. No - the admission is there that failure happens. And that redemption is not a time for looking back and cringing (did the woman frantically sweeping her house say a few choice words she regretted later?) but a time for rejoicing.

So - whenever I find my patience again...whenever I find my equilibrium again, can I surrender to the joy of the found-ness, the fullness of redemption? Perhpas this is what it means to be forgiven. To receive mercy...

The word of God

Luke 15:1-10

Now all the tax-collectors and sinners were coming near to listen to him. And the Pharisees and the scribes were grumbling and saying, 'This fellow welcomes sinners and eats with them.' So he told them this parable: 'Which one of you, having a hundred sheep and losing one of them, does not leave the ninety-nine in the wilderness and go after the one that is lost until he finds it? When he has found it, he lays it on his shoulders and rejoices. And when he comes home, he calls together his friends and neighbours, saying to them, "Rejoice with me, for I have found my sheep that was lost." Just so, I tell you, there will be more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine righteous people who need no repentance. 'Or what woman having ten silver coins, if she loses one of them, does not light a lamp, sweep the house, and search carefully until she finds it? When she has found it, she calls together her friends and neighbours, saying, "Rejoice with me, for I have found the coin that I had lost." Just so, I tell you, there is joy in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner who repents.'