I was feeding my daughter Cheerios
the other day when I watched her drop one.
She was in her high chair, so there was very little she could do about
the lost Cheerio, but I sat back, and watched as she aimed to do everything she
could retrieve that Cheerio.
I was astonished at her
persistence as she looked around for her MIA Cheerio. If you watch my daughter eat, she literally,
with both hands, will shovel the food into her mouth. When this Cheerio tumbled into oblivion, the
logical thing to me was for her to eat the other Cheerios and give up on that
one. But she had another plan. Her lost Cheerio meant something to her,
something that I will never understand.
She stopped everything she was doing, which was stuffing her mouth with
as many Cheerios as it would hold, to find this one lost oat.
I, on the other hand, saw a whole
plate full of Cheerios. I thought to
myself, “Why spend the effort in this one lost Cheerio especially now that it
is somewhere that has made it all nasty and dirty?”
No matter how much I tried to
rationalize that this Cheerio was not worth it to my 16 month old, she would
not listen, she just kept saying, “Uh Oh.” and continued looking for it.
And, would you believe it, she
found it tucked away in a sticky crevice in the high chair. Her persistence paid off, and the reward; the
joys of eating her lost Cheerio.
Now when she found it, she didn’t
gloat or boast about it, she simply picked it up, looked at it, looked at me
then stuck it into her mouth and went back to her other Cheerios.
Luke 15 shows us similar
persistence from a God who searches for his lost sheep. He wanders the hillsides, into the villages,
into churches, until he finds his sheep that are astray.
The Pharisees and hypocrites on
the other hand said that these sheep weren’t worth his time. The ones that are really messed up on the
outside seem too far gone, so why waste your time with them? Why not go find people who look nice and neat
and slap a Christian bumper sticker on their camel’s rear end and call it a
day?
Well, Jesus’ mission wasn’t for
those people, his mission was to find those who really needed him, and when he
did, there was a celebration in heaven like no other.
Read the story for yourself, and
put yourself in the shoes of the sinners and tax collectors, and get a fresh
perspective of the persistent love of Christ that would stop at nothing until
he calls you his own.
Luke 15:1-7
Now the tax collectors and sinners were all drawing near to hear him. 2 And the Pharisees and
the scribes grumbled, saying, “This man receives sinners and eats with them.”
3 So he told them this parable: 4 “What man of you,
having a hundred sheep, if he has lost one of them, does not leave the
ninety-nine in the open country, and go after the one that is lost, until he
finds it? 5 And when
he has found it, he lays it on his shoulders, rejoicing. 6 And when he comes home, he calls together his
friends and his neighbors, saying to them, ‘Rejoice with me, for I have found
my sheep that was lost.’ 7 Just
so, I tell you, there will be more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents
than over ninety-nine righteous persons who need no repentance.
