You probably know that feeling. Something you thought you had lost, maybe you turned the house upside down looking for it, maybe you have gone the length of buying a replacement and then it turns up. Well if you haven’t had that feeling - and on reflection I suppose most sensible people haven’t - let me tell you it’s not like the story Jesus told when the woman finds her lost coin and throws a party to celebrate. Actually it would have been better if the thing had stayed lost. I mean, you have paid for a replacement! And when you have calmed down a bit you are hit with the realisation that if you had remembered where you put the original in the first place then your pockets would not be so light. So in the end it’s all your fault. And that’s never easy to live with. (You’ll notice I have not declared what the lost item was. I am not keen to be a complete laughing stock.)
There are of course times when the joy of finding something that was lost is uncomplicated. In my early days in the Preshal Trust, having been given a lift to Govan I came home to discover I had lost my keys, house and car. We drove back and asked in the Preshal building and rooted around the pavement on Govan Road. Nothing. My friend thought it might be worth asking in a nearby newsagent. Yes! Someone had found them and handed them in on the off-chance that the poor soul who couldn’t get into his car or house might come looking. Now it’s then that you know something of the joy of the angels when the sinner’s heart turns to God. The joy that what was lost has been found.
It is always good to return to those stories in Luke 15 just to remind ourselves of the impact that is made on the Eternal Kingdom when a man or woman turns to Christ. We are not spiritual scalps, pew-fillers, names on the Roll, but individuals who having heard the story of Jesus and through the Holy Spirit’s indwelling are eternally connected to the Heavenly Father and His purpose. We belong to the Eternal Kingdom and the angels rejoice to see that Kingdom expand.
I wonder if we can take this further. We don’t always have that warm glow of belonging. We don’t always have that awareness of being ‘found’. We sometimes might even wonder if we are truly part of the Kingdom. The light has grown dim. When we find our way through that spiritual disorientation is it too much to expect that once again the angels rejoice over us? If they are aware of our home-coming they must surely be aware when the light flares once again and we are assured that we had never really wandered. We were always within God’s loving focus. What was needed was for us to remember the price that was paid for our home-coming. I feel this more and more during this time of ill-health and treatment. In the darkest days it is so vital to remember quite simply how much we are loved by God, even to the extent of the giving of His only Son. Whatever falls to us, light or dark, up or down, pleasing or painful is surrounded with His love and nothing will ever be powerful enough to separate us from this love. We are eternally ‘found’, part of the Kingdom, what God has started in our lives will be completed.
Some hymns of a bygone age have fallen out of favour because of their emphasis on the Cross but many are the product of intense reflection on the meaning of Jesus death for individual men and women. I don’t know anything about K.A.M. Kelly (1869 - 1942) but I know I need to embrace his words more firmly:
‘Was it the nails, O Savior,
That bound Thee to the tree?
Nay, ’twas Thine everlasting love,
Thy love for me, for me.’
