Today's Scripture Reading (January 19, 2024): Luke 15
Many years ago, I lost my iPod. I had
purchased the iPod instead of an iPhone, and, at the time, all of my friends
made fun of me for what they considered a stupid purchase. After all, an iPhone
can do everything an iPod can, and it is a phone. (On the other side, if I had
bought an iPhone, maybe I would have lost it and been in even more trouble.)
Now, I am pretty sure that I know where I lost it. The last place that I
remember having it was in my office. So, I first tore my office apart,
believing it had to be there. I took my books off my bookshelf because I
thought the iPod might have fallen behind the books. I looked in my desk, got
down on the floor and searched there; I moved my filing cabinet. But all of my efforts
yielded nothing. I couldn't find my iPod.
I am sure the last place I had my
iPod was in my office, but I went home and started looking there. Question: I
don't think I am weird in this, but have you ever looked for something where
you are pretty sure it isn't? I know I didn't lose my iPod at home, but I
couldn't find it in my office, so I started looking for it elsewhere. I began
to search in rooms I hadn't even been in for months because maybe my iPod had
walked in there of its own volition. But it wasn't there either.
I must admit that I would still look
for my missing iPod for months afterward when I walked into a room. I don't
know; maybe my iPod walked over to your house. When we lose something,
especially something significant or that costs us money, we search for it.
How much more do we search when it is
something in which we have placed our hope? The first thing we must realize in
this parable is that the woman had found a source of hope in her ten coins. The
coin in question was a silver drachma. And there were a couple of reasons why
the woman would search for the coin. The first is purely financial. A silver
drachma, while not worth much by today's standards, was worth more than a day's
wage for a working person of the time. These people lived at the edge of
survival, and it wouldn't take much to push them over the line, from being fed
to being hungry. So, to lose a day's wage was significant; this coin provided
hope, security, and maybe even what Jesus called "Peace" to the
impoverished woman. The coin was important financially.
The financial aspect of the lost coin
is likely what we think of most often when we approach this parable. But I
wonder if there is possibly something more in the story. There was another
tradition into which Jesus might have been speaking. It was customary for a
woman to wear a headdress on her wedding day with ten silver coins sewn into
it. The woman would scrimp and save for an extended period of time so that she
could have these coins on her wedding day. The word used here is simply a
woman, single or married, but it may also indicate an engaged woman.
Can you imagine the distress she was going
through knowing that her wedding day was approaching and she had lost one of
the ten coins she was preparing to sew into her headdress for her wedding day?
Or if she was married, one of the ten coins that had been in her headdress on
the day she was married. Those ten coins symbolized hope for the future and
couldn't be replaced, at least not easily.
So, Jesus says that she searched for the
lost coin. It wouldn't have been an easy search. The only light would have been
a circular window that was eighteen inches at its widest point. The floor was
pressed dirt covered with reeds. It would have been like looking for a needle
in a haystack. Her only hope was that she would see the metal coin reflect the
light of the lamp.
But it was her source of hope, not
just financially but emotionally. So, she had to search for it.
Tomorrow's Scripture Reading: Luke 16
No comments:
Post a Comment