“And when she finds it, she calls her friends and neighbors together and says, ‘Rejoice with me; I have found my lost coin.’” (Luke 15:9, NIV)
It’s a red tee. A long one. Probably four inches. Topped with a huge cup, a good half-inch or more across.
So it’s hard to lose. But someone did. And my buddy picked it up.
For three months, playing several days a week, he still had this tee, swooping down to snatch it up though it spun away after each drive. He suffered more than a few moments of mumbling despair each time it didn’t catch his eye right away.
Then one day we were standing on the ninth tee when he turned to me and said urgently, “I left my tee on the seventh hole.” This was actually the first I had heard of this tee, and he hadn’t missed it on the hole in between because it was a par-3. Now he was truly disheartened. But he also realized how silly it would look for a grown man to charge backward two holes and say in dead earnest, “Did you guys find my tee?”
So it was gone.
Or not.
Three holes later, the twosome behind his came up onto the eleventh green, which sits below the twelfth tee. Now it didn’t look so silly, and my buddy said with a note of humor, “Did you guys find my tee?”
And here’s the beauty of it all. They knew exactly what tee he was talking about!
You can get your brain matter tied up in a knot over the doctrines of election and free will and who finds whom. Or you can just join the angels in their whooping.When we are children and we lose a dear possession, the pain is great. If it’s a pet, oh, bar the doors, Katie—the tears are a-comin’! As adults, perhaps we should not feel this way, especially about small things. You know, golf tees and such. But in their disappearing we can stand reminded of one of Jesus’ shortest and yet most punchy parables, that of the woman and her lost-then-found coin.
Interestingly, in Luke’s Gospel this parable sits between two others you may know better: the Parable of the Lost Sheep and the Parable of the Prodigal Son. In the first, the shepherd finds the sheep. In the second, the lost son returns to his father. That is, home finds the sheep, but the son finds home. So in the Parable of the Lost Coin, is the woman God and we the coin, or is the woman us and God the coin? What Jesus emphasized was the rejoicing in heaven over the lost being found. You can get your brain matter tied up in a knot over the doctrines of election and free will and who finds whom. Or you can just join the angels in their whooping.
We know so much less than we think we do when it comes to the way salvation works its wonder in the heart of this man or that woman. But we, like children, know how splendid it is to find what we thought was forever gone. So let’s get busy looking for the lost. This isn’t just a mission—it’s a keep-your-eyes-open-all-the-time sort of thing. Because we don’t always know when a celebration is coming.
—
Jeff Hopper
February 6, 2019
Copyright 2019 Links Players International
The Links Daily Devotional appears Monday-Friday at www.linksplayers.com.