The Missing Lens

If you know me personally, then you probably know that my eyes aren't very good. The only time that I'm not wearing glasses or contacts is when I'm sleeping, because that's the only time of day I don't need to see anything. Except the insides of my eyelids, of course, but those are close enough to my eyes that I can see them without contacts.

Those of you that know me personally probably also know that I don't wear glasses very often. In fact, it'd be a strange day if I wore my glasses for much longer than a minute or two. I usually put my glasses on in the bathroom after I take out my contacts, walk to my bedroom, take them off, and then go to bed. And in the morning, I'll put them on in my bedroom, walk to the bathroom, take them off, and put in my contacts.

You know those contact lenses they always advertise on TV? The soft ones that you can squeeze between your fingers? I don't wear those. I wear hard contacts (the name is self-explanatory) and if you tried squeezing them between your fingers, they'd crack. You also can't just pluck them out of your eyes like you can with soft contacts. You have to hold your eyelid a certain way, blink, and pop them out.

The "pop them out" part gives me trouble from time to time. Usually, my contacts will pop out nicely into the palm of my hand or into the sink. I can pick them up, clean them, and put them in their case without a hitch. Sometimes (a few times a month), though, the contacts don't pop out that nicely.

A few days ago, I was taking out one of my contacts and when I popped it out, I heard it click against the sink. I looked in the sink, but the lens wasn't there. Here we go again, I thought to myself. I put my glasses on and started looking at the area around the sink. It wasn't there either, so I got down on my hands and knees and started looking around on the floor.

My contacts are tinted slightly blue to make them easier to find when you drop them, except there's a blue throw rug under my sink. The whole blue-on-blue thing makes for some great camouflage, but it never helps much when I'm looking for an AWOL contact lens. I ran my fingers over the rug, but the contact wasn't there either. I started looking around on the tile floor. No contact. Rats!

You're probably wondering why I put so much effort into finding a stupid little contact lens. One of the other big differences between hard and soft contacts that I forgot to mention is price. Soft contacts are pretty cheap and you can buy them in bulk. Hard contacts are expensive and they're usually custom made. My contacts cost $50 a lens and I have to wait a few days to get a new one made, so they're not much fun to lose.

Anyway, I kept looking and for the life of me, I couldn't find the missing lens. I rechecked the sink, the rug, and the floor, and I was still short one contact. Eventually, I found it stuck to a towel hanging from the towel rack, which is about five feet away from the sink---no joke. Crazy stuff, eh?

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The reason I was so intent on finding my missing contact is because it was valuable to me. I didn't want to spend the $50 to get it replaced, so I kept looking for it until I found it. If you lost $50, wouldn't you go looking for it too?

If you think my story sounds like another story you've heard, you're right. My story about a missing contact is pretty similar to one that Jesus told:

"Suppose a woman has ten silver coins and loses one. Does she not light a lamp, sweep the house and search carefully until she finds it? And when she finds it, she calls her friends and neighbors together and says, 'Rejoice with me; I have found my lost coin.' In the same way, I tell you, there is rejoicing in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner who repents."

Luke 15:8-10 (NIV)

Sometimes, I think we read some of Jesus' parables without actually fully appreciating them. Take the parable you just read, for example. Nowadays, some people would read it and think, So she lost a coin. Big deal! What's one coin, more or less. I lose change all the time and I don't go sweeping my house looking for it. What an odd woman! That's because they don't understand how much a coin was worth in Jesus' day. 

The coin that the woman lost was probably a Greek drachma, which was worth about a day's wages. How much money a person earns a day obviously depends on where they work, but in today's terms, a day's wages is typically somewhere between $50 and $100. Suddenly, the woman in the story doesn't seem that odd after all. She had lost something that was valuable to her, so she searched for it until she found it.

All of us are very valuable to God (Matthew 10:29-31, Psalm 139:1-16),  but God takes a special interest in saving the lost. Jesus Himself said that He came to earth not to save the righteous, but to save the sinners. In John 3:16-17, Jesus says that the very reason He came to earth was so that the world could be saved through Him. And Luke 19;10 says, "the Son of Man came to seek and to save what was lost."

The reason Jesus spent so much time seeking the lost is because they were valuable to Him. Just like a lost coin or a missing contact lens, sinners mean a lot to God. As Christians, they should mean a lot to us as well. One of the final commands that Jesus gave His followers was that they make disciples of all nations (Matthew 28:19-20). Jesus isn't physically on earth anymore, so it's our responsibility to pick up where He left off. If we don't reach out to sinners, who will?

A lost soul is far more valuable than a lost coin. Have you done any searching lately?