Or suppose a woman has ten silver coins and loses one. Doesn’t she 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.

Jesus in Luke 15: 8-10

One Christmas season, Alyson and I spent almost a week turning the house upside down looking for a diamond earring that had gone missing. The pair wasn’t large or expensive, but it was an early gift from me to her. We were upset to lose one of them. We crawled around the house looking in the carpet. We pulled all the cushions off the couch and stuck our hands down into the cracks. We even sifted through the dirt in the vacuum cleaner. Twice. Despite our best efforts, we didn’t find the missing earring. Eventually, we gave up looking.

A year later, Alyson startled me with joyful shouts while we were decorating the house for Christmas. “You’ll never believe what I just found!” she squeeled, “My diamond earing!” It had apparently fallen into the garland the previous year and fell out onto the mantel when putting it back out the next year. We couldn’t believe it. Even though it was just a thing, our hearts were filled with joy over its recovery. For several days, we told anyone who would listen the story of this unlikely find.

Jesus teaches us that anytime a person repents, God feels the same kind of joy we feel when we find something valuable that has been lost. It is sometimes difficult to imagine God being joyful over our return to him. We may feel we have messed up so badly that God could never be pleased with us again. When we think that way, we fail to understand the root of God’s joy. God’s joy is rooted in his love for us not our own behavior. While we may have given up looking for Alyson’s earing, God never gives up looking for us.

Christmas isn’t just a story about a cute little baby. It’s a story about a God who entered the fray of our lives in order to bring us the good news that the Father is waiting for us to come back home to him. On the cross, Jesus made it clear, God’s love can cover over any sin we commit, except the sin of refusing to return to him. He will not force us to come home, but when we do, he promises to meet us with nothing short of a celebration.

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