Tuesday in the Second Week of Advent
One lost sheep out of a hundred doesn’t seem too bad; it happens. I’m more sensitive to what it’s like when someone losses a dog. That happened to one of my older sisters. When she opened the car door and got out, her Toy Poodle slipped out as well, unknown to her until she returned. Her anguish was immense until someone found the little fellow and identified the owner on the dog’s collar.
Lost sheep and lost dogs can’t compare with the anguish over a lost child, especially the tragedy of children abducted for sex trafficking, or the shock of losing a young boy or girl by an accidental death. The anguish experienced by those parents is beyond me, I can’t even imagine how hard it is. Mary and Joseph felt it for three days until they found the child Jesus in the Temple.
God’s sense of loss over an unrepentant sinner is so intense that it took the agony of Jesus’ crucifixion to reveal what the Father experiences when someone is willfully lost, when we go our own way down some dark path that leads to hell. The whole life of Christ is the Father’s search to find the lost and bring them safely home. And we can help God bring back those who are lost by our words of encouragement and the witness of our own love for God, and the power of our prayers for them.