Streams of Mercy
In yesterday’s gospel passage, Jesus told stories about lost things – a lost sheep and a lost coin. These stories tell us much about the character of God, and about the attitude God encourages us to have toward one another. Like the shepherd who found his lost sheep and brought that sheep home, rejoicing; like the woman who searched high and low for her lost coin, and calls her neighbors in to celebrate her good fortune in finding it - so God rejoices when God finds us, and calls us to do the same for each other.
These stories challenge us with the vision of a new community where we love and value one another as God loves and values us. In some moments, we are recipients of God’s love and grace; in other moments, we are bearers of that love and grace to others.
At one time or another we’ve all lost something, or someone. We lose our self-respect, our temper, our courage, our sense of purpose or direction. We lose heart and health and hopes and dream; we lose our perspective from time to time. We know what it is to be lost and unable to find where we are going, and we know what it is to be lost all the while knowing exactly where we are! Again and again on life’s journey, we find ourselves away from where we belong, separated from the person God created us to be. We lose our way for a season and find ourselves feeling outside of God’s care and keeping.
On a regular basis, each of us turns out to be a lost sheep; and time and again, we are that precious coin that disappears and just cannot be found. At such times, God, like a shepherd with no common sense, leaves the rest of the flock and searches everywhere in order to find us. God, like a housewife gone crazy, tears the place apart, searching every dark corner to find us. The faithful shepherd travels into the thicket to pull us out and will crawl into the hole we have dug for ourselves and lift us up. If we’re hidden, he turns up in the crawl space of our soul, calling us to take heart, reminding us that we are God’s own.
May the God of lost sheep and lost coins and lost sons and daughters help us to find what we’ve lost in our years of living, that we might begin to live abundantly, called to new life in areas that are troubled and broken and wounded. May the God of lost sheep and lost coins and lost children redeem our past, help us to live fully in the present and open to us a future filled with hope and possibility – and give us grace to help each other along the way.
Giving thanks for our faithful God who finds us in our hiding places, and for those streams of mercy, never ceasing.
Elizabeth