I hate losing things. Nothing makes my spirit more restless. No matter what I lose and how many things I lose, I've yet to be able to enter into the peace and presence of God with quickness and ease.
The most recent thing I had the privilege of losing was an earring – just one in the pair. I received the pair as a gift in high school from one of my cousins who probably bought it at a night market for a dollar or two. I didn't even like the earrings when I first received them, and I most likely would never have purchased it myself if I saw them on display. But over the years, they found a place and purpose in my life with certain outfits and occasions. I guess you could say that I grew into them so much so that even in my travels, I carried them with me. A few weeks ago in Hokkaido, Japan, I was ready to turn in after a long day of sightseeing, when I reached up to take my earrings off and realized that one was missing from my ear. I went from thinking a flurry of things that made some sense (check the floor around me, empty my backpack, shake out my clothes), to a bunch of things that made no sense (check under the bed, empty bags that were in potential projectile trajectory, shake out the curtains). I went from calm and ready to turn in after a long day, to anxious and ready to search under every rock in Japan if need be. Gone was my one earring, and in its place was nothing but a hole. An ugly, gaping hole. It didn't even matter that I still had one earring, because the loss of the other created an emptiness that I couldn't imagine being filled ever again. That familiar feeling of a wound in my heart washed over me – one that has accompanied losses small to large, few to many, cheap to priceless, fleeting to eternal. And since I practically allowed loss to do this to me the moment I gave things a place in my existence, I was angry at myself.
Losing things makes me think because loss is a collective part of the human experience. We tend to associate loss with negative thoughts and emotions, and perhaps even believe that loss is a result of sin entering the world. But I would argue that loss was there before the Fall, intentionally placed by the Creator to play a unique role in a perfect creation. Before the Fall, loss made room for faith, hope, and love to sweep into the human heart. Loss was beautiful, because it made room for the more that was promised and sure to come. In nature, the loss of night made room for day, and day for night. The loss of winter made room for spring, and spring for summer. The creation of time itself was a complete illustration of loss, as seconds passed away to make room for eternity. In relationship, the loss of being just one made room for two, and through multiplying as one, the loss of two made room for a world of divine image bearers. It wasn't until afterwards that creation lost the ability to lose things with beauty, grace, and perfection. As sin entered the world, loss still continued making room, but it was harder to see good things come and fill it. Faith, hope, and love had been muted by doubt, despair, and indifference. Loss was no longer embraced, but feared as the room it made grew emptier and emptier. And in the vast emptiness created by loss in a fallen world, nature and relationships shrank smaller and smaller, blurring the divine image creation was meant to bear.
At the end of the day, I think of this infinite space created by the spiritual hijacking of loss by sin's entrance. And the question I ask is whether or not this gaping hole can be filled. I think of the children in Eden who lost a Father, the nation who lost a holy priesthood, and the people who lost a Messiah. Then inevitably I think of the Father who allowed Paradise to be lost, a blessing to be discarded, and a Son to be killed; and in this moment I realize that loss can be redeemed, and the infinite space filled by an infinite God.
I know this because from the mouth of the Son who was One with the Father, I hear of the shepherd who lost his sheep, the woman who lost her coin, and the father who lost his son (Luke 15). And in these parables, I find that they are found. Through this process of loss I so despise – a process riddled in many cases with anxiety, fear, irrationality, anger, guilt, and shame – they are found. The cynical part of me wants to believe that it is for those reasons that the shepherd, the woman, and the father kept searching. After all, those are reasons why I often continue searching.
But somehow, the part of me that has been awakened and is slowly being transformed believes that it is because of faith, hope, and love that these characters kept searching. For how else could they have continued? In the exact order Jesus told these parables, it was but one sheep among a hundred, one coin among ten, and one son between two. How long and how hard can anxiety, fear, irrationality, anger, guilt, and shame, yearn and burn for just one? How much joy and celebration can they muster for just one? If not out of faith, the shepherd would never have left his remaining ninety-nine sheep in open country and went after his lost one. If not out of hope, the woman would never have lit a lamp, swept the house, and searched carefully. And if not out of love…oh if not out of love, the father would never have seen his son from a long way off, ran to him, kissed him, and clothed him.
I still hate losing things, but these parables comfort me. And even better than these parables, is the greatest story they pay tribute to – the Gospel. Indeed, the sons of Adam and the daughters of Eve had lost a Father walking through Paradise, but through the last Adam (1 Corinthians 15:44-49), they find a Son ushering in the Kingdom of Heaven. Admittedly, Israel lost a priesthood to the nations in the order of Aaron, but through the great high priest in the order of Melchizedek (Hebrews 7:11-28), they find that people from all nations are blessed. Certainly the Israelites lost a Messiah, but through the suffering Servant who was led like a lamb to the slaughter (Isaiah 53), they find true salvation.
The Gospel comforts our losses wide and long, high and deep. As good news, it gives me a faith for the lost – the rare kind of faith I envision in a man who after living a life of sin, for the first time truly repents and believes in Christ on his deathbed. I believe this is the strongest kind of faith because it is one that can only offer what is truly lost – the wasted, blemished past, forever without a future to redeem and sanctify. It is a faith of utmost sorrow and humility that admits every achievement in life before that dying moment as nothing, because of the absence of Christ in the life he lived. It is a faith that rests only in the finished work of Christ to have washed away all sin, for there can be no further futile work of his hands to attempt good works. It is a faith that depends only in a love so great to redeem a soul so wretched – one that hopes to be finally found after having been so lost. Lord, give us this faith so strong, that we can offer up what is truly lost to you, and hope in your love to find them.
I never found the earring I lost, but I wear the earring I have left sometimes now as a reminder. Reaching up to my empty ear, I feel the space that loss made room for. And I rejoice in my heart knowing that the God I worship showed us through his Son that loss was meant to make room for spaces to be filled.
"And now these three remain: faith, hope, and love. But the greatest of these is love." 1 Corinthians 13:13
What has loss made room for in your life, and how have you seen it filled?
