Luke 15:8-10
Two summers ago I was volunteering with Habitat for Humanity. I often bring some of my own tools with me, and on this occasion I brought a battery-powered impact driver. I must have been pretty tired at the end of the day because I left some of my tools behind. Over the following couple of weeks I was able to find all of the tools either among the Habitat tools on site, or noticed by a Habitat staffer and returned. I found the impact driver, but not the pricey rechargeable battery.
I looked for the battery. I asked people about the battery. Each time I went to a new job site, I searched the Habitat panel truck, and the onsite container. No luck. I participated at some training at the Habitat warehouse some months later and I went through all the similar batteries they had in storage there, but mine was not among them. Logically it should have turned up, but it hadn’t.
Our local Habitat affiliate moved its warehouse, reorganizing and reshuffling its equipment. I was there doing maintenance last week when I remembered my battery. While I had resigned myself to the fact that the battery was gone, I looked one last time and found it–my battery with my initials engraved among a dozen other similar ones.
I was elated. I went to the other volunteers and said: “Look, I found my battery!” I felt as happy as could be.
Yesterday I was volunteering on a Habitat site doing framing. I have a small flat bar that I carry with me and use it all the time. Somehow it went missing. I looked all over the house and on the grounds around it. Bummer. I’d already lost one of those some years ago and this was #2. Anyway, I was nailing some sheathing low on the side of the house, and I found it easier to nail while sitting on the ground. As I shifted my position, I saw my flat bar almost invisible among the wheat straw spread over the damp ground and mud. I was happy again, but this time I remembered the parable of Jesus about the lost coin. Then I realized how joyful God feels when someone lost is found. I finally got the point of the parable.