Have you ever lost a person in a crowd? Sometimes it is another adult who is in no danger but it is just annoying that you have to spend all that time finding them again. More annoying if they are the wandering type who don’t tell you where they are going.
It is a quite different matter to mislay a child in a crowd, horrifying if it is in a strange country. The emotion that surges both in the search and then in the finding is very powerful
The intensity of feeling comes from the loving relationship we have with the lost person. We dearly want them back. We fear for their safety. We bend every effort to find them. We make unrealistic demands on others to help us, All for love.
It is easy to understand God’s search and love for the people he created. It is easy to see the depth of love he has for ordinary creatures for us. It is a wonder to be sure. Hard to grasp that he might actually love us that much. But it is the truth.
We can see the extent of his effort and the depth of his love when we see Jesus. God become a human. Teaching, urging, demonstrating the Father’s love. Calling his people back to their God. And dying on the cross to make it possible for them to be friends with God again.
No wonder there is such an outpouring of feeling in heaven when even one of us sinners turns back to God. God and his angels have a huge amount invested in the search and rescue of humans. He really wants you and me to be his friends, not distant acquaintances, and certainly not cold-shoulder stand-offs.
God’s search and rescue mission ought to take away all feelings of inadequacy we might feel (some of us feel we are not good enough for God). Of course we are not good enough. That is who he is rescuing! His search is especially for those who are not good enough.
And those who don’t need rescuing? Who are good enough? Who are not lost? The only ones in that group are those who have already been rescued.
Dale