July 7, 2022
The Almost Daily will be on Summer Vacation until August 8th. But fear not! You will receive a devotional each Monday through Friday from the excellent Mockingbird Devotional entitled Daily Grace. Enjoy! - Paul Walker
“Take care that you do not despise one of these little ones; for, I tell you, in heaven their angels continually see the face of my Father in heaven. What do you think? If a shepherd has a hundred sheep, and one of them has gone astray, does he not leave the ninety-nine on the mountains and go in search of the one that went astray? And if he finds it, truly I tell you, he rejoices over it more than over the ninety-nine that never went astray. So it is not the will of your Father in heaven that one of these little ones should be lost.” (Matthew 18:10-14)
What is always striking to me about this parable is that it is not concerned at all with why the sheep has strayed away from the herd. Because if the parable suggested why the sheep became lost in the first place, then this would be a parable about correcting your bad habits, or not losing sight of what’s important, or some other tangible thing you can do to keep the faith: Buck up! Try harder! You wandered before and you better make sure it doesn’t happen again. But if any explanation is offered for why the sheep strays, it is simply the fact that it is a sheep, and wandering away is what sheep tend to do! Humans, too, are itinerant and in need of a shepherd.
A lost sheep tends to die without the protection of a shepherd; you never find packs of wild sheep roaming the countryside. When sheep inevitably wander away, God is the good shepherd who pursues and rescues them. The restoration of the one lost sheep does not depend upon the sheep’s ability to turn or repent or even muster up some semblance of contrition. No—what matters is not the measure of our sorrow, but the measure of God’s mercy. It doesn’t depend on our own will to turn to God, but on God’s will to save. We wander all the time, and God is determined to always bring us back, even from the dead.
[Todd Brewer, Daily Grace - Mockingbird Devotional Vol. 2]
