By Larry Stover
Stover lives in Valley Grande and is pastor at Praise Park Ministries Church of the Nazarene

A senior adult friend was talking with me about physical problems and growing older.  They made the comment, “Some people refer to these years as ‘golden,” but if that is the case, mine are tarnished.” I had to agree.

It reminded me of a job I had while growing up as a child. My mother had two silver plated serving trays that prior to being used, had to be polished. For whatever the reason, it was one of my chores. I can still hear her saying, “polish those trays until you can see yourself like in a mirror.”  One thing was for sure, prior to polishing, you couldn’t see any kind of reflection of anything.

As I was reflecting on those days, it reminded me of the story of the lost coin recorded in Luke chapter 15. Verses 8-9 tell us, “Or what woman having ten silver coins, if she loses one of them, does not light a lamp, sweep the house, and search carefully until she finds it? When she has found it, she calls together her friends and neighbors, saying, ‘Rejoice with me, for I have found the coin that I had lost.”

Can you imagine the state of that coin when she discovered it? More than likely, she had dirt floors. It probably looked more black than silver. There was definitely no mirror-like image to it.

The early church fathers of the fourth century likened the loss of that coin to the lost image of God in the lives of humanity. They believed and taught that because of sin, humanity had so tarnished their reflection of God that unbelievers looked helpless and hopeless.

Sometimes life has a way of knocking us down and then kicking at us. We are tempted to give in to this downward spiral of despair that sees little or no hope.

The lost coin is still somewhere in your house. God still reaches out to us in love and mercy. He looks beyond our faults, sins, disobedience, and despair and sees our needs. We all have the potential to reflect the image of God through forgiveness and restoration. The key is, “We must want to change. We must want our life to get back on track. We must muster the faith to believe that there is a better way to live than our present state of hopelessness and misery.”

We need to remember what God has to say about the creation of people in Genesis chapter 1. He said, “Let us make man in our own image, according to our likeness…So God created man in His own image…male and female He created them….God saw everything that He had made, and indeed, it was very good.”

At the wedding of Adam and Eve, God was celebrating with the first two people He created in His own image. That first wedding is a foreshadow of a wedding that is discussed throughout scripture. We have all been invited to the “Marriage Supper of the Lamb” as the Bride of Christ!

Who will have the privilege of attending the wedding of all weddings?

Scripture is very plain. It is for those who have accepted the divine grace of forgiveness through Jesus Christ and daily reflect that image in which we were created.

If you have been beaten up by a lifestyle that has destroyed the image of God in your life; if that mirror image is cracked or even broken, if you feel unloved or even unwanted, remember that you were created in the image of God. He has been reaching out to you your entire life begging you to allow Him to restore that tarnished image. His love, mercy, and grace are still in abundant supply.

You need a church home and a loving church family. But more than that, you need to restore your relationship with God through Jesus Christ.  The God who restores and gives new beginnings is just a prayer away.

When that image is restored it will make your life “Simply Beautiful.”