VALUED AND PRECIOUS

Part II of "Why the Church?  Because God So Loved the World"

Matthew 13:45-46
Luke 15:8-10

Is a penny on the ground worth stopping to pick up?  Well, it depends on the value we put on it.  If we're going through lean times, every penny counts.  If we collect coins, it may be worth our time to check it out.  Some people will pick it up because they believe it's a heavenly reminder of whom we can put our faith in.  It's all a matter of perspective and what we value.

It seems to me like a lot of fuss and bother for sixteen cents - sweeping out every corner, moving around furniture, sifting through flour and the ashes of the cooking fire; emptying out the water pots for one drachma.

From the perspective of the woman who lost the coin, it was much more valuable.  A silver drachma, at that time, represented the wages for ten days of labor and one tenth of her life savings.  Beyond it's monetary value, that coin would also have special meaning.

Coins were sometimes given to wives on special occasions.  That coin may have been given to her upon the time of her marriage, the birth of a child, or to show her husband's esteem for her.  Each coin she received during her life-time would have been sewn onto the headband she wore to keep her head covering in place. 

Losing that coin, to me, would be equivalent to me losing my wedding rings.  And yes, on more than one occasion, I have turned the house upside down looking for them.  They are precious me, worth far more to me than their monetary value.

So how do we put a value on a human being?  Do we base our worth on our economic or social status?  Does our value depend upon our age, our earning potential and what we can do for others?

"As of 2011, the Environmental Protection Agency set the value of a human life at $9.1 million. Meanwhile, the Food and Drug Administration put it at $7.9 million — and the Department of Transportation figure was around $6 million." (July 21, 2012, Globalist Magazine)

That's a lot of mone, but, really, can we put a dollar amount on the totality of a human being?  What price can we put on someone,mind, body and soul?

The Parable of the Lost Coin tells us that we are so precious to God, that God will move heaven and earth to seek us out and offer us the pearl of great price, salvation through Jesus Christ.  It is priceless gift of God's love that we cannot acquire or put a legal or monetary claim on.  It is not a thing to be acquired or owned, but rather it is an invitation to enter into an existence, a wholeness that the world cannot give us.  

Just because God so loves us.

Through this story, Jesus shows us how precious we are to God, the tenacity of the seeking God, and the grief and the urgency of this search even to the cross.  Each person's worthiness to receive such gift is based on God's love for each of us, not on our or anyone's opinion of our value.

There is no doubt about it, finding and restoring our relationship with God gives much pleasure and joy to God as well as to those who are about God's business.

Being about God's business is the mission of the Body of Christ and the calling of every Christian.  

When we look at someone, do we see them from God's perspective or from our human perspective, them on how they look, how they behave or what their country of origin is?  

Do we hear an accent,  see a tattoo or body piercing, look at their clothes, their age or job (or lack of it) and judge their worth based on the criteria of the world.  Or do we see through them through God's eyes as someone so precious they were worth Christ dying for?   As someone worth caring about, taking the risk of calling them friend and neighbor and reaching out to them in the name of Christ?

I think it begins with a simple prayer:  Lord, help us to see others as you see them, even those who annoy us, who make us angry, who frighten us, whom we have been taught by the world to ignore or look down upon.   

Open our eyes so we can see the image of God in them, and fill our hearts with Your love for them.  Forgive us when we allow our preconceptions to devalue them and forget who they are to you.  Fill us with Your Holy Spirit so that we can be about God's business, beyond the four walls of a church building, sharing the love of Christ with all we meet.

Let it be so, Lord.  Let it be so.