When my soul was in the lost-and-found
You came along to claim it.
— Carole King
Not until we are lost do we begin to understand ourselves.
— Henry David Thoreau
If light is in your heart, you will find your way home. — Rumi
Questions prompted by Luke 15: 1-11 (parables of lost sheep and coin)
- What is precious that you have lost?
- What has been lost, then found or reclaimed, in your life?
- Who or what serves as a guide in your life?
- To what flock do you belong?
- If you found what was most precious and significant, after it was missing, with whom would you choose to celebrate? And how?
Lost & Found
We tiptoed the tops of beaver dams, hopped hummocks, went wading, looked
at spring flowers, tried to catcha snake, got lost and found. How fine
it was to move at a meandery, child’s pace. — David Sobel
Live your daily life in a way that you never lose yourself. When you are
carried away with your worries, fears, cravings, anger, and desire, you
run away from yourself and you lose yourself. The practice is always to
go back to oneself. — Thich Nhat Hanh
People take different roads seeking fulfillment and happiness. Just
because they’re not on your road doesn’t mean they’ve gotten lost. — Dalai Lama
The wind passing over his unscarred face was cold from the snow of the
surrounding mountains … and relished life as if … tasting it for the
first time. The longing it brought, and the desire. All the bitterness,
all the sweetness, even if it was only for a while, never for more than a
while, everything gained and lost, lost and found again. — Cornelia Funke
In these two parables that he offers at the beginning of Luke 15—the
parables of the search for the lost sheep and the woman’s finding of her
lost coin—Jesus provides vivid images that depict God’s penchant for
searching out what is lost in order to reclaim it and restore it to
wholeness … These parables remind us that redemption is always God’s
work, God doing for us what we cannot do for ourselves. The most we can
do is turn ourselves Godward—and the act of turning lies at the Greek
root of the word for repentance, metanoia—and pray that in our
turning, we will—like a sheep, like a coin—be unlost. Be unhidden. Be
found. These parables call us also to remember that redemption does not,
cannot, happen in isolation. Redemption restores us to the community
and continually challenges us to work toward the flourishing of those
whose lives are bound together with ours. Yet while God continually
pulls us toward community, redemption is not about conformity: being
restored to the circle does not mean thinking or acting or looking like
everyone else, and making all our pieces look the same. Repentance and
redemption invite us instead to discern what we have to offer, what
distinctive gifts God has placed within us that no one else can bring,
the pieces that, when brought together with the richness of the pieces
that others offer, transform the brokenness of the world into a pattern
of beauty. And when this happens, as Jesus illuminates in these
parables—when what is broken and lost is restored and redeemed—it is
worth a celebration. Is not complete, in fact, until some rejoicing gets
under way. — Jan Richardson
Lost Coins
You already have the gold coins beneath you, of presence, creativity, intimacy, time for wonder, and nature, and life. Oh, yeah, you say? And where would those rascally coins be? … It is our true wealth, this moment, this hour, this day. — Anne Lamott
Jesus likens God to the woman searching for a precious coin. The woman finds the lost coin and rejoices. Like this woman, God longs for us and searches for us when we are lost and in pain. When we are found by God, we gain new insight into the meaning of God’s love. — Laura Hammel
Sheep & Shepherd
The shepherd drives the wolf from the
sheep’s throat, for which the sheep thanks the shepherd as his
liberator, while the wolf denounces him for the same act as the
destroyer of liberty. Plainly, the sheep and the wolf are not agreed
upon a definition of liberty. — Abraham Lincoln
The human being is not the lord of beings, but the shepherd of Being. — Martin Heidegger
The shepherd always tries to persuade the sheep that their interests and his own are the same. — Stendhal
There was a shepherd the other day up at Findon Fair who had come from
the east by Lewes with sheep, and who had in his eyes that reminiscence
of horizons which makes the eyes of shepherds and of mountaineers
different from the eyes of other men.
― Hilaire Belloc
Christ’s flock is made up of sheep that not only listen to their
shepherd, but are also able to recognize his voice, to follow him,
faithfully and with full awareness, on the pastures of eternal life. — Pope John XXIII
God is the good shepherd who goes looking for the lost sheep. God is the
woman who lights a lamp, sweeps the house, and searches everywhere for
her lost coin until she has found it. God is not the patriarch who stays
home, doesn’t move, and expects his children to come to him, apologize
for their sinful behavior, beg for his forgiveness, and promise to do
better. God is the father who watches and waits for his children, runs
out to meet them, embraces them, pleads with them, and begs and urges
them to come home. It might sound strange, but God wants to find us as
much, if not more, than we want to find God. — Henri Nouwen
Because no amount of this rebellion and smallness and bigness and
self-sorrow can ever change our belongingness to our shepherd. None of
it. And none of the ways we seek belongingness to lesser shepherds and
wolves can ever change our true belongingness to the Good Shepherd.
Because in reality, when we wander off and try and get our needs met
through all the wrong ways and allow others to be our shepherd and when
we are dumb and let the wolves in and when we do all the other things
sheep just do, well, it doesn’t mean we are not worthy to have a good
shepherd, it just makes it all that much better news that we have a good shepherd. — Nadia Bolz-Weber