Luke 15: 1-10, Luke 12: 22-34, Matt 10: 39

Fiona Bridges

Lost and found. It's always a busy place in a youth workers office after a summer jam packed with camps; and from my experience, it's always loaded with a pile of interesting stuff! There are always at least two jumpers, one pair of old pants, a hairbrush, some smelly socks and a teeny little T-shirt you can't work out quite how any of your youth group squeezed into! Then there are those odd items, like wellies, stuffed teddies, watering cans and blow up swimming floaties (the kind little kids wear in the swimming pool)! I know it sounds strange, but over the past 6 years I have come across some really odd stuff in lost property!

There is one thing though, that surprises me even more that finding floaties in lost property and that is the kind of items that are left there and never claimed. Items like mobile phones, diamond earrings, gold necklaces and brand new Nike trainers. Now I can understand someone not wanting to claim back their old knickers, but a set of diamond earrings! Why on earth would someone not want to claim those back? The only thing I can figure is that either they haven't worked out they have lost them yet, or they don't really have any idea how much they are worth. Then at the opposite end of the scale there is someone who comes in every week after youth to see if anyone has found their Scooby Doo tooth brush yet!

From a weird Aussie youth workers point of view, sometimes I think our lives can be a bit like the lost and found pile. We can spend all our time searching for things that are of no real lasting value, while we forget about the most precious items of all. We spend hours in the shopping mall looking for that perfect pair of jeans that is going to make our butt look half the size it really is (yes I have done that too!), yet we forget to spend time searching through God's word and finding out who we truly are in Him. Could it be that somehow we still haven't realised the true value of those things we tend to leave till last?

The thing about the parable of the lost sheep and the lost coin that strikes me is that Jesus uses two things that are precious to explain the whole story. sheep and coins. Well you may not be into sheep, but I am sure you know the value of money. Now think about how the story would sound if it was called 'the parable of the lost cornflake'. No woman would spend all her time and energy searching out a corn flake would she! It just wouldn't make sense, yet if we are honest with ourselves we probably spend an awful lot of time searching for cornflakes if you get my drift.

It says in Luke 12: 22-34 that instead of worrying about stuff like clothes, possessions and how gorgeous our bodies look, we need to be going after treasure that will last out until heaven. Stuff like purity, righteousness and love. So before you check out that hair style again in the mirror, (you look fab! trust me), have a think through what might still be sitting in God's little lost and found marked with your name on it! Who knows there just might be something far more valuable than you ever imagined!