Lost and Found

Luke 15

Luke collects a set of parables on being lost and found. Jesus tells three stories, beginning with a lost sheep, then a lost coin, and finally a tale about two lost boys, only one of whom realized he was lost. As Jesus tells these stories, he focuses first on the joy of being the finder, then in the last of being found.

Once after moving to a new city, I got really lost. I decided to head out into a rainy night to explore the neighborhoods around my new home. After a few turns, I was far beyond my new home, wandering through a maze of unfamiliar streets in subdivisions that disconcertingly looked surprisingly the same. There was no way to judge landmarks or find something significant on which to base a retracing of my steps. I could have tried to simply go back the way I came, but I feared that would be longer than to keep winding and wending my way through the neighborhoods to find an exit near home. So I kept running, assuming one of these streets would intersect a main boulevard from which I could find home. I began to think of my wife and children back in the house, having no idea where I was. This night was still in the infancy of cell phones, so I had none. If I had, I probably still would not remember my new phone number. I thought that I could stop and ask a stranger to help me out, but my mother's voice still clanged in the back of my mind, "DON'T TALK TO STRANGERS!" I was not that desperate yet. So, I kept running and splashing through the streets, dealing with the surreality of having no idea where I was, yet knowing I was in a city everyone knew about. The dark and the rain wreaked havoc with my inner compass. I was just about to give up, turn around, and trudge back the way I came, when I hit an intersection that was indeed a main road. I was found! I had five miles to run to go home after already going about five or six, but I knew I would be back soon with my family. Those last miles flew past.

Being found feels good.

We can have that joy, peace, and unbelievable lightness of being in having someone help us find ourselves. That really was the point of Christ's ministry. He did not condemn the lost, he found them. He sought them. He did so not to berate them for making a mess of things, but to release them from the fear, loneliness, and alienation of being out of step with everyone and everything.

My wife, God bless her, did not berate me for my idiocy in running in the dark in a new place--she rejoiced--I was lost, but I was found! That was a real and actual experience of grace. It made being found all the better.

But then there is that Older Brother out in the front yard. Little Brother is found. Dad is overjoyed. Shoot, the whole HOUSE is overjoyed. Little Brother has come to his senses. He found his way home after breaking every house rule. Dad cares not one whit for justice--his lost boy, as good as dead, is home. That is all that matters. But not to Older Brother. He fumes. He fulminates. And he refuses to go inside. He is lost. Badly lost. He has no idea how lost he is. It does not strike him as odd that everyone is inside except him. When Dad comes out to bring him in, he sticks up his back and refuses the invitation--what? be with HIM? Nope. I busted my rear, obeyed every rule, got not even a goat for my trouble, but HIM? Nope, I'm not going in...

That sort of lostness is hard to deal with. Not many maps show how to get home from there.

But one.

That map is love. It is love that lets go of the need for being right, and instead seeks only to be with other people in love. That love is grace. It is also compassion. If Older Brother will stop being right long enough to see his father's joy and his brother's relief, there will be more than enough joy for him, too. Justice was paid a long time before--his brother nearly died, and his father nearly died from grief--that's enough of that. Now, it's time to be found.

Being lost hurts. Being found is peace that passes all understanding.

Choose wisely.