PreprationUse pennies as visuals. It might be nice to have one penny to give to each child so they can remember they are important to God.
Key Passage:
"Or what woman, if she has ten silver coins and loses one coin, does not light a lamp and sweep the house and search carefully until she finds it? "When she has found it, she calls together her friends and neighbors, saying, 'Rejoice with me, for I have found the coin which I had lost !' "In the same way, I tell you, there is joy in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner who repents."
Manuscript
"Or what woman, if she has ten silver coins and loses one coin, does not light a lamp and sweep the house and search carefully until she finds it? "When she has found it, she calls together her friends and neighbors, saying, 'Rejoice with me, for I have found the coin which I had lost !' "In the same way, I tell you, there is joy in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner who repents."
This is one of my favorite parables Jesus tells in the Book of Luke. I like it because I can relate to it so well. This whole past week, my printer has been out of yellow ink. It's a newer model, so it won't print anything at all even if one color is out, which was really frustrating. Several times I wanted to print a black-and-white document, but couldn't. Anyway, this particular type of ink is pretty expensive and not something usually budgeted. However, I saw in last week's circulars that a store in town would refill empty ink cartridges for a third of the price of a new cartridge, which sounded like a deal to me. As I said, we don't usually budget for this type of thing. So I went around the house and collected all the spare change I could find in order to go get my ink cartridge refilled. I looked in the corners of the sofa, emptied our change jar, got all the change out of the cup holders in the car, emptied my purse, found my husband's secret stash…I mean, I cleaned us out!
Why? Well, because I knew every single cent counted! If I was just a little bit short, it just wouldn't be good enough to achieve my goal. So after scouring the house and getting all my coins in a big pile, I sat down on the floor to count them. I needed to know I got them all. So I started by making piles of 10. Because my middle daughter, who is only 3 years old, is learning how to count right now, I let her count with me. She counted to 10 a few times, then mostly played with the pennies—they were almost all pennies. As she was playing with them, she'd say, "Mama. Don't use this one. It's dirty. I don't like it." Then she'd throw the dirty pennies away!
I was like, "NO!!! I NEED IT!!!" You see, that penny was important to me. In fact, every penny was important to me. This story of the lost coin reminded me of just how very important we are to God.
Jesus told the Parable of the Lost Coin because He wanted us to understand how much God cares about us. Being lost is a common theme in the Book of Luke. A lot of times people think of being lost as a derogatory term, and they identify the word lost with being an outsider. That's not the case at all. When we say lost, we mean something is missing. Think about it: We don't miss something we don't care about!
You see, Jesus came to seek and save those who were lost because God misses them. The woman in our story had 10 coins but couldn't find one, so she turned her house upside down trying to find one lost coin. She was so happy when she found it—Jesus even described the party that's thrown in heaven when someone is found. Wouldn't that be cool party to attend? It's all because one person turned to God.
Here's a key thing I want you to notice about our verse. There is a way not to be lost: Jesus described repentance to us. Wow, that's a big word. Do you know what repentance is? Jesus said a sinner must "change his heart and life." How do you do that? Well, let's say you are headed in one direction in life—you are following your own ways and are headed toward sin. To repent literally means to change your direction and go the opposite way. You turn around 180 degrees head back the way you came—toward God and His will instead of away from Him and what He wants. When we do that—when we head toward God—that is when that party in heaven takes place.
I find it kind of funny that my little daughter looked at that outside layer of the pennies. She didn't want those pennies if they weren't pretty. However, that was only on the outside. Those pennies had seen a lot of wear and tear; they'd had a hard penny life. Sometimes people are the same way. We've all got sin in our lives, and that sin marks us. It makes us look yucky. It makes us feel yucky. It's a blemish on our souls, kind of the same as dirt on a penny. Here's good news: Jesus offers salvation. When we repent and ask Jesus to forgive us of our sins, He cleans us up so we're shiny as new pennies. Because Jesus died on the cross in our place, our sins are forgiven; they're gone! That forgiveness takes away our sins, our scuff marks, our failures. It makes us new again. You see, even though we were once dirty, we still had value! God knew this. Just as it doesn't make sense to get rid of a penny just because it's not pretty anymore, God never will throw you away just because you're not as shiny as the person next to you. God made you the way you are on purpose, and you have so much value to Him. When we let God in our lives, He restores us to what He meant for us to be all along. We are found.
You know what? You can never, never do anything that will make God stop looking for you. Notice that in the parable: The woman didn't stop looking for that coin until she found it. God is always calling us home.