Matthew 18:12-14 “What do you think? If a man owns a hundred sheep, and one of them wanders away, will he not leave the ninety-nine on the hills and go to look for the one that wandered off? And if he finds it, truly I tell you, he is happier about that one sheep than about the ninety-nine that did not wander off. In the same way your Father in heaven is not willing that any of these little ones should perish.
When my kids were little, we would watch a famous cartoon show with train characters. I recall one episode in which a larger train was furiously chasing a smaller train, taunting, "You can't get away! You can't get away!"
That's a negative image of not being able to get away from a pursuer. But how about a positive image that shows us how we can't get away?
God is the lover of our souls and our pursuer when we're lost. Simon Tugwell writes in his book, Prayer:
So long as we imagine that it is we who have to look for God, then we must often lose heart. But it is the other way about: he is looking for us. And so we can afford to recognize that very often we are not looking for God; far from it, we are in full flight from him, in high rebellion against him. And he knows that and has taken it into account. He has followed us into our own darkness; there where we thought finally to escape him, we run straight into his arms. . .
God's providence means that wherever we have got to, whatever we have done, that is precisely where the road to heaven begins.
What a comfort to realize that God knows we will stray, knows how to find us, and knows how to guide us back toward heaven.
This is one of the key differences between Christianity and other religions: it is based on God seeking humans rather than humans seeking God. So let us open ourselves to the pursuing nature of God and discover where it leads us.
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