When the lost don’t care
We once lost two seven-year old children, a daughter and the son of a friend, on Camber sands. They were lost for about half an hour. The sands are extensive at low tide with pools and streams and the beach was crowded. When we found them they were totally absorbed in building sand castles. It was only half an hour, but I still remember what it felt like.
Losing someone we love is probably the most devastating experience most of us will ever have, whether through death or their disappearance, as poignant posters for lost family members tell us. And when the stories are widely publicised there is a collective sharing in the heartache and the desperation. We understand.
The sheep, the coin and the son had no great sense of anxiety and or even understanding of their lostness. Indeed, the son probably thought it was all gain, until the money and the friends ran out. All the action, concern and driving longing were in the loss and the searching.
The shepherd already had ninety-nine, but he searched for the one. The woman had nine more coins but went on looking until she had found the one. But the Father had watched the son choose to leave, choose to take all the inheritance as a right, not as a gift. But he did not go after him. This relationship was not ownership, not tutelage, not slavery; it was love that frees, that waits and longs for the return.
'For this my son was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is found.' If we have only the faintest glimpse of what it must be like to receive back into our arms someone we love, who, we thought, was dead or simply gone, then we know why there is celebration, joy and a party over one sinner who repents.
Sometime today we need to recall that overwhelming joy over us and the security of the love that holds us. And then we will begin to pray for the lost around us with some of the longing and commitment of our shepherd and Father.
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