As my son and I walked through the parking lot, he stooped to pick up a coin. “Cool; it’s a dime,” he said. “If it had been a penny I wouldn’t have bothered, but a dime – now that’s a different story.”

I guess he doesn’t know that a 1943-D bronze cent was recently sold for $1.7 million, or realize that certain other pennies have been sold for as much as $200,000 in recent years. Then again, I have no room to talk. There have been lots of times that I was too tired, lazy or busy to bother picking up a stray penny.

Aren’t you glad that God doesn’t take the same attitude when he decides to pick someone up after they have fallen? If people were coins, Jesus would consider every dull old penny every bit as valuable as a shiny new gold piece. And, He would search for every lost coin. Consider the parable of the woman who lost a silver coin, then searched diligently to find it.

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 (Luke 15:8-10 NIV).

I believe there is also rejoicing in heaven every time someone stops to help pick someone up who is lost or fallen because that is a reflection of Jesus’ heart. I pray that I never cease to recognize the value in every human life, and that I always avail myself to be the LORD’s arms extended.

After all, everyone could use a little pick-me-up now and then!