lost, found

Photo by František Čaník on Unsplash

Jesus said, “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 neighbors, saying, `Rejoice with me, for I have found the coin that I had lost.'“
- John 15:8-9

As a parent, I spend a lot of my time searching for lost things.

I look for stuffies left at school, for Paw Patrol figurines lost in the play room, for books that have fallen below the bed and now live with the dust bunnies. 

The remote for the TV? Always searching for that. And my kids’ shoes never seem to be where they should be.

Socks! We’re always looking for the tall socks that our youngest  likes. Rain boots, gloves, and clean pillowcases that I could have sworn I put back on the shelf in the linen closet but now are nowhere to be seen.

And I would like to blame all my time spent looking for lost things on my children, but the truth is - I am a forgetful person. (It’s not just my kids’ shoes that are never where they’re supposed to be.)

Maybe it’s my ADHD, but I spend an inordinate amount of time looking for things. I need my wallet and go searching in my giant purse, rifling through old receipts and books and pens and who knows what else, just to find I left it at home in the purse I was carrying yesterday. 

Yes, I spend a lot of time searching for lost things.

And apparently, that feeling of panic and frustration and angst that comes when you’re searching for lost things - that feeling has something to do with the kingdom of God.

I must admit, I find the interpretation of this parable (and the one before it, of the sheep owner who leaves the 99 sheep in order to find the lost one) insufferable. I am and, honestly, always have been bored of the metaphors of God as a shepherd. Perhaps it’s such a male image in my mind (even though scholars tell us that shepherds in the ancient world were often young girls). Perhaps it’s just too cliche to ring true for me.

But I think the real truth is that I don’t like the idea that I am meant to see myself as the lost sheep, the lost coin, the lost one.

I have spent a lot of my life feeling lost. If I go back and read old journal entries that I wrote when I was a teenager with a burgeoning understanding of myself as a follower of Christ, it’s all too clear. “There is a God-shaped hole in my heart.” “Something is missing, and I know it’s you, God.” “God, I so badly want to give myself to you, but I don’t know how.” (real excerpts from my journals in the 2010s).

As a young person, I did feel lost. And the Christian teachers I was listening to were telling me that everyone was lost without Jesus, and that the map back to wholeness was this narrow way of understanding Jesus, of understanding salvation as a cosmic redemption of my disgusting, dirty soul.

It took me twenty years to learn that the only thing that was ever lost was my connection to my Self, and a reverence for my own inner voice. It took me a while to come to understand salvation - and Jesus - in a more liberative way, a more ancient and embodied Way.

The parable of the woman who loses a coin and sweeps her whole house to find it is so strange to me. Probably because I’m forgetful, and when I lose something I often give up finding it if I can’t locate it quickly. Especially something as small as a coin. And am I supposed to see God as the woman, and myself as the coin? But coins don’t have agency, or even the potential to repent. I bristle at the implication that I am a lost and forgotten thing, down among the dust bunnies, waiting for an all-powerful being to find me and give me value.

Maybe, in the metaphor, God is the woman - and I like the image of God getting down on Her hands and knees to sweep under the couches, crouching to take the couch cushions off and look for a coin. I like the image of God struggling to pull Her refrigerator out from the wall so She can see if the coin rolled back with the dust bunnies and electrical plugs. I like the idea that God notices when something goes missing, even something as small as a coin. I like the idea that God is meticulous, diligent in searching for Every Lost Thing that the rest of the world has forgotten - every memory lost to time, every child lost to hunger, every language and culture and ecosystem lost to greed.

I like the image of God holding a broom, sweeping dirt into a pile in the corner of the kitchen, hands on Her hips as She asks Herself, now where did that coin get to?

Or maybe, in the metaphor, I am to be the woman - maybe I am called to notice when things that have been entrusted to me have gone missing. Maybe I am to search just as meticulously and diligently as God for the things I have lost - the parts of me that I have lost. Maybe this parable is an invitation to crouch down low and sweep behind every piece of furniture within me, searching for my own voice and wisdom that was there all along, but shoved out of the way by a culture that tells me to make myself small for the sake of others’ comfort, and shoved down by a theology that demonized my own Self, and body, and instincts.

What if Jesus is inviting us to consider whether there is anything that has been entrusted to us that we have lost, over the course of living our lives, and encouraging us to search for it with dedication and care?

No, I don’t feel lost any more. And truth be told, I never really did.

The only thing that was lost was my own innate connection with God, with good, with Love - and it’s my life’s work as a disciple of Christ to diligently search for it, hour by hour.

Jesus was a searcher, always seeking out the lost. Although more often, it seems that the lost sought him. The sick, the women, the children, the abused, the neglected - they found him, whether he went looking for them or not. The rest of the world didn’t get it.

But if you’ve ever lost yourself, if you’ve ever woken up one day and realized you didn’t recognize yourself any more - maybe you get it. And maybe we all need a reminder to get down on our hands and knees and sweep under the bed and stop at nothing to find ourselves again.