When I lay down to sleep at night, I begin my prayer with thanks for the day. When I have a bad day, it’s not easy to give God thanks for it. Several weeks ago, I had that kind of day. I had taken a break from work to run errands. When I got home, I couldn’t find my glasses. I was really upset because I had only had these glasses for a few months and they were not cheap!

I had driven to Walgreens that day. I wear prescription sunglasses when I drive, then switch to prescription eyeglasses when I go inside. So I knew I had my glasses on when I shopped. What could have happened to them from the time I left the store to my arrival at home? I looked in my car to see if they fell out of my purse. I called Walgreens to ask if they had been found. They weren’t there. I drove back to Walgreens to see for myself if I had dropped them next to my car.

That night, I prayed that God would help me find my glasses, even though I knew that if I dropped them, they were most likely broken. The next day, I thought to myself, I should look under my car. There they were! One arm was cracked, but the lenses were untouched. How fortunate that I didn’t drive over the lenses when I drove into the garage! I was relieved.

I took my broken glasses to my optician to see if they could be fixed. He made a temporary repair but said the repair wouldn’t last long-term. If I bought the same frames, he said they would put the lenses in them.

My husband found the same model of frames online. The company didn’t have the same color as my broken pair, but there were several other colors, so I ordered a pair. I did not get an email confirming my order. That concerned me. I returned to the website using my browsing history and printed out my order.

When neither the order nor the order confirmation had arrived in a week, I emailed the company. No response. I called and spoke to Jonathan, the optician who runs the website. Sounding frazzled, he told me he had shipped them. When the frames didn’t come after another week, I called again. This time, Jonathan said he wondered whether he had sent them to the wrong address. In the next phone call, Jonathan said that he didn’t have the color I ordered, but he could send me another color. At this point, I didn’t care about the color. When the frames finally arrived, I was so relieved!

This is just an ordinary story, isn’t it? People lose things, even valuable things, every day. But when something you value is lost, you will look everywhere to find it. You will be so excited when you find it, you will want to tell your friends. No matter how damaged your precious thing is, you will do whatever you can to restore it to its rightful condition.

That’s how God views us. We are so precious to him. He will not stop pursuing us until we are found. We may appear damaged and beyond repair, but not to God.

Read Luke 15. Those who are lost are precious to God. Jesus told three stories to get this point across.

Rejoice with me. My precious child was lost, and now he is found!

In the same way, I tell you, there is rejoicing in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner who repents.”

Luke 15:10 NIV