The Lost Coin
Necklace or headdress of drachma coins worn by brides, similar to wearing a wedding ring now.
Years ago, I was put in charge of church girls camp for several summers. 25 girls, 10 leaders, and me in the wilderness camping and learning survival skills. Sounds fun right? Actually, I loved it. It was right up my alley as a mountain girl. One summer, camping in the wilderness as a group, one of the female leaders went missing. We drove the main road and called out to her, with no response. The area was a hilly and dense forest.
So I came up with a plan. Each leader took a few girls and headed out off the main road with a compass. They were to travel away from the road 15 minutes (east), then turn north for 15 minutes, and then turn west for 15 minutes and get back to the road and walk back to camp and report. We would cover miles and miles in about an hour. Good plan, right?
I considered myself somewhat of an expert on wayfinding. I learned to use a compass when I was young, and used my skills from time to time. Just a few years before this camp, I had taken a small group of women on a backpacking trip. With the help of my compass and my map, we found a lake that was pretty far off of the main trail and camped there for the weekend.
As I headed off the road with my small group of teenage girls and my compass, I was certain that I was in no danger of getting lost myself. I checked my compass often, but the terrain was rocky and rough, and we had to find alternate routes along our path. Before I knew it, we were lost. I could no longer find our way back to the main road. Eventually, I got myself and my small group to a road, but it was not the road our camp was on. We started walking, and eventually we were picked up by another leader that was out trying to find us.
This is not the only time in my life that I’ve been lost, both literally and figuratively. I felt lost as a teenager. I was definitely lost as a young adult. At 20, when I couldn’t stop drinking, I felt so alone. It got to the point where I was blacking out from drinking too much. I hadn’t met my biological family yet and I didn’t know that we had a long history of alcoholism running through my veins. I didn’t know about the family history of severe depression and drug use. I was fighting a battle and didn’t know how badly the odds were stacked against me.
Years later, as I sat in church, I was listening to a talk about the lost coin. It’s one of the parables Jesus gives to the Pharisees who were angry that Jesus sat and had meals with the sinners. Eating with someone, meant friendship and acceptance. In explanation, Jesus tells three parables: the parable of the lost sheep, the parable of the lost coin, and the prodigal son. The parable of the lost coin is about a woman who loses a drachma, or a piece of silver, that was worth one day’s wages. The parable says that she had 10 drachma, and some people have hypothesized that the piece of silver that was lost made up her wedding headdress, worn during that time like a wedding ring, to show that you were married. The woman lights a candle, sweeps the house, and searches for the coin until she finds it. Then she calls all of her neighbors and friends and throws a party to celebrate the finding of the coin. What was lost, was found.
The speaker in church was talking about being lost and he said something that has never left me, when talking about the parable of the Lost Coin.
“It was not the coins fault that it was lost. It just was.”
Sometimes people are like that- it’s not their fault, they are just lost. Think of all of the ugly circumstances that people around the world are either born into, or forced into. Think of all of the debilitating diseases and illnesses that our bodies are susceptible to. Yes, it’s easy to get lost. It’s also easy to forget the purpose in it all. It’s easy to get distracted from what’s really important and find yourself in unfamiliar territory. It’s easy to feel like you’re wandering through rocky terrain with no direction.
And just like the woman, who searched for the precious coin with her candle in hand until she found it, it is through LIGHT that we are found.
The message of Jesus was clear to the Pharisees at the time: these people are precious to me. I am using my light to help them. They might be lost, and I am here to help the lost.
