Letting Yourself Be Found

“While he was still a long way off,
his father caught sight of him,
and was filled with compassion.
He ran to his son, embraced him and kissed him.”

Luke 15:20

The succession of the three parables of lost and found in the Gospel of Luke is something that has always fascinated me. A lost sheep, a lost coin, and a lost son, or really, two lost sons. In all three parables there is always the one who seeks and the one who/that is sought or found. In the first two parables, the sheep and the coin were lost and the one seeking stopped everything he/she was doing to find them to the point where someone might even describe them as foolish. Why would any sane person leave 99 sheep to go and find just one that got away? It does not make sense, but it does not have to. Perhaps because to this person, it was not the number of sheep that was important, but rather that all of his sheep was together. Just as with the sheep, God will always seek us out, but will we let ourselves be found?

Sometimes we do not even know that we are lost, and so naturally we will not allow ourselves to be found because we are not lost! It is in this state that we unknowingly stray away from God. We become so caught up with the world around us, being so busy and occupied with whatever it is that fills our time, that we fail to see how far away we have actually drifted, how lost we have really become. But luckily there is Someone who is constantly looking from afar, sending signs and signals to help us see the light in front of us, and ready to embrace us when we finally are ready to be found.

There will be times in our lives when we find ourselves in places where we do not find much peace or joy. Times when we feel lost, times when we feel we do not belong, and times when we feel we want to hide and be away from the world. We feel lost, a sense of not belonging, and the desire to hide because deep down we really want to be found, seen, and known. We feel these things because we were created out of love, created in, out of, and for relationality. We were made to be found. We were made to be known. But sin causes us to run away and to hide ourselves. Sin brings us to where we really do not want to be, and that is where God comes to find us. He comes to find us in the darkest of places and in the messiest of situations. God is the seeker who leaves the 99 to find us. He is the person who will turn His house upside down to find us. And, He is the Father who patiently waits for us from afar so that when He see us He can run to embrace us and welcome us.

Brothers and sisters, let us allow ourselves to be found because that is what our hearts truly desire: to be known and to be seen just as we are. We want someone to see us, to know us, and to love us. And the good news it that God already does.