"Or what woman, if she has ten silver coins and loses one coin, does not light a lamp and sweep the house and search carefully until she finds it? When she has found it, she calls together her friends and neighbors, saying, 'Rejoice with me, for I have found the coin which I had lost.'" Luke 15:8-9
The word used in the Greek for "silver coin" was "drachma," which amounted to a day's wages for a typical worker. When a Jewish maiden married, her husband would pay a bride price of usually several silver drachmas (or the Jewish equivalent, a half-shekel coin). The woman would string them and wear them across her forehead.
These coins were sort of her insurance policy. If her husband divorced her or died, these would have to support her until she could find another means of income. Since women didn't usually work outside the home, a means of support would be hard to come by. The coins were all that stood between her and starvation.
You can understand, then, how precious each coin was. The woman would have been overjoyed at finding that one lost coin. That's just a fraction of how jubilant Jesus is each time one person goes from lost to found. Could that person be you?
Prayer: Lord God, thank You for sending Jesus to search for each lost person, each one who has lost his or her way to You. Thank You, Lord, for that day when You sought for and found me. I didn't know how much I needed You until that day, and I will never forget.
No comments:
Post a Comment