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| Essential 100 -- Searching diligently | | Date Created: Apr 01, 2005, 07:57 AM |
60 — Friday April 1 — Luke 15
I had a lecturer in College who called Luke 15 "the Lost & Found Department" of the New Testament. Of the three stories, the only one that I've not written or taught about extensively is the middle one, about the woman sweeping the house for her lost coin, because the other two have cool punchlines attached to them. The way that the shepherd leaved his 99 in the field and the way that the land-owner father embarrasses himself by running down the street to meet his son both reveal God's irrational love for the one that is lost.
But I can't find anything irrational in the woman's actions. The coin is valuable; lighting a lamp to see under things and in dark corners is a reasonable and not terribly expensive thing to do and who can fault sweeping? The point in this parable is not that God's love for the lost is so great that he takes risks and acts "irrationally" but that he prizes what he's lost enough to mount a full-scale search operation. Maybe that's the point that I need to take from the reading today: it's one thing to say that God and his people should be crazy in love with the lost; it's another to say that should translate into careful preparation and hard work. |
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