Today’s Scripture Reading (January 3, 2026): Proverbs 19
One of my many favorite
Bible stories is found in Luke 15. Luke 15 recounts three stories of lost items.
The Chapter begins with the story of the lost sheep, probably better phrased as
the lost lamb. It culminates in the countercultural idea that the shepherd
leaves the ninety-nine to seek the one lamb that has wandered off. The second
story tells of a woman who has lost a coin. It evidently isn’t a penny that is
lost, but a valuable coin. Sometimes, in our world where coins are becoming
almost obsolete, in the United States and Canada, the penny has disappeared; I
wonder whether we truly understand the emotional impact of the story. The coin
in this story is valuable. Maybe it would be like misplacing our paycheck. However,
even those are disappearing with the advent of direct deposit. I admit that I
still like holding a cheque in my hand or having even a little cash in my
wallet. According to the parable, the woman loses her coin. The coin is so
important and valuable that she sweeps the entire house in an effort to find it.
And she refuses to stop until the coin has been found.
The final story in these
tales of the lost is about the lost son; we sometimes recognize it as the story
of the prodigal son, although I have argued that while the son is the one who
is lost, the prodigal family member, which means wasteful, is really the
father. The son comes and asks for his inheritance early, and Dad is willing to
waste that portion of his wealth on this lost and ungrateful son.
An essential part of the
story is that the son leaves home with this money, and as long as he has money,
he also has friends. But when the money is gone, so are his friends. I heard
someone recently proclaim that friendship is a selfish proposition. People are
only your friends as long as there is something that they are getting from you.
As soon as that ends, as soon as the money runs out or the influence drains,
they will abandon you. I am not convinced that is true. I know I have friends from
whom I receive nothing other than friendship. But maybe I have to concede that
most of the people who gather around us are there to get something out of us.
The son, broke and alone,
ends up feeding the pigs. And then, he wonders if there is any way that he
could return home to Dad. Perhaps he can still work for His Father, even though
he has destroyed any value he has as a member of the family.
Of course, Dad doesn’t
care. He just wants his son to come home. If there is one person in the lost
son’s life that was never attracted to his money, it is his prodigal (wasteful)
Dad. And His Father welcomes him back as a son, even though he has nothing. Dad
doesn’t care.
Proverbs reminds us that
most of our friends are with us only because of what we possess; even the
closest of our friends will likely abandon us if we experience poverty. But it
also reminds us that there is a friend who is closer than a brother (Proverbs
18:24). We know that friend is Jesus, but I am naive enough to think that there
are people in our lives who don’t care what things we might possess. And maybe
we need to be reminded to invest our efforts into those relationships; the ones
that we know will stand with us, even when things get rocky, and our money has
left us alone.
Tomorrow’s
Scripture Reading: Proverbs 20
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