The entire chapter revolves around the idea of a lost item being found. Looking, searching, hoping, finding and then rejoicing, repeated themes in each of the three stories.
The setting is Jesus’ consistent behavior of spending time with people the religious establishment considered ‘persona-non-grata’, sinners and tax collectors!
The message seems to be that Jesus is looking for the lost to bring them home… to bring them back to the Father where they can be reconnected with the One who has never stopped loving them.
By extension it is a message about the kind of heart we, as Christ-followers & Christ imitators, are supposed to exhibit.
Question is…am I (are you) looking, searching, hoping finding people who are far from God and bringing them to the Father? Am I (are you) the kind of people who rejoices when sinners turn in faith to God and receive God’s unreserved forgiveness? Or do we harden and pout like the older brother of the third story?
Think about it…
Lord, give me the mentality of the coastguard who will risk their lives to find lost people at sea, who will hope and labor and search until every last shred of hope and possibility has been exhausted. Lord, give me Jesus’ heart for the lost… Amen.
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