For All the So-Called Lost by Emily Kegler

Jesus,

They say I am lost.

They told me to follow you and I did— 

to the edges, to the margins, to the humble and grieving, 

to the oppressed and slandered, 

to where you always showed you were— 

and when I called back to them to show with joy what I had found, 

to celebrate what had been restored, they called me lost instead.

They call me wanderer, 

they call me stubborn, 

they call me black sheep. 

It was supposed to be all green pastures and still waters, 

it was supposed to be all restored souls, 

but all I could taste were my unattended doubts, 

and all that bubbled up were troubled waters of unanswered questions, 

and for asking them, the shepherd said my soul was wrong. 

They call me sinner, 

they call me wasteful,

they call me prodigal, 

and Jesus, I do not know how to tell them the riches they say I stole when I left the house of God turned out to be pig slop. I do not know how to tell them how like you, I shared meals with sex workers, and it was a feast of unending grace. 

Jesus, today I heard how pennies

can’t be made of copper anymore 

because the amount of copper needed to make a penny is more expensive than a penny is worth, and Lord, I feel it. 

They ask me to be something smaller, to be pressed down into something worth less, to be crushed into something worthless. 

Jesus, I have tried, I have tried to be small enough, 

I have tried to be shiny, 

I have tried to be worthy, 

but every time I press myself with the imprint of someone else’s expectations it misses the mark and I am left off-center. 

So here I am, Lord. 

A quarter clinking around in the bottom of the divine washing machine. 

A nickel dropped under the car seat, ground into a gritty floor. 

A penny, slipping from a pocket, 

rolled into a corner under the bedwhere dust mites and bobby pins are my only fellow believers. 

Jesus, I need to see the broom in your hands. 

I want to hear you turning over each empty pitcher 

and shaking out every neatly folded sheet. 

I need to see your belly pressed against the floor 

and your dark eyes peering into my own darkness. 

You know darkness, Lord. It doesn’t scare you. 

You made it. Long before your hands were bound in wrinkles and veins, you crafted night and day, and you are afraid of neither. 

But I am lost, and I am afraid. 

Lord, they call me lost, and if I am, 

I want you to find me the way you found the world: 

nicked at the edges, dusty and rusty, 

called unwanted and unworthy, 

and still your hands reached out

to cradle every worthless coin like each was a pearl of great price. 

Jesus, in this congregation of the forgotten corner I am finding I am not alone. 

We are the church of the still lost in the lost and found. 

So when you come, bring a satchel ready to collect what longs for home. 

Jesus, for every sheep and coin and child called Lost, 

may you pull us close and whisper, “Found.”