Losing to Find
May 20, 2020
I feel like I’m starting to understand the woman in the parable of the lost coin a bit better.
Through a privileged lens, or one in which we feel in charge of our lives, to lose one coin may not seem like a big deal. Perhaps our privilege or sense of control leads us to think of ways we can gain more coins, rather than taking the time to look for what has been lost.
Parables invite us to view the Kingdom of God through metaphor. What if we were to view that coin as one thing we simply cannot live without? What if that coin represents hope, for example, or love? Connection? Justice? What would we be willing to give to find it?
Would we give our time, energy and resources? Would we be willing to give up our old ways of being in order to reclaim that which is most precious to us? And what would keep us going until we find it? Faith? Humor? Courage? Community?
Once we find it, how would we tend to it differently than before, to ensure that it is never again lost?
I don’t know all the answers but I do understand this woman better. In her I see the mothers in our program – budgeting in the face of unemployment, becoming more open to relationship and connection during quarantine, advocating for healthy boundaries and reasonable shifts in the jobs they can’t afford to lose. Because there’s one thing they don’t want to live without – Hope.
I will be honest – this season has been incredibly challenging to the very relational work that we carry out at Bridge of Hope. It’s important to remember why we’re here. When hope is more than something we talk about, when it’s something so precious that we feel it in our bones, we know that we can never afford to lose it.
It’s all of the challenging in-between work that carries us to that which we seek. And it’s what we seek that carries us through the mundane, causing it to have meaning. And somehow all of it is present with us each moment – the mundane, the precious, the losing, the seeking, and the finding. Somehow the whole parable represents the Kingdom of God.
May we all find what we cannot live without.