Don’t you hate it when you lose something? When is the last time you misplaced your keys? Irritating, isn’t it? Imagine losing something of tremendous value—maybe a $1,000 bill, or your grandmother’s diamond engagement ring. Even worse–remember the panic you felt when your child got lost at a grocery store, at the mall, or at an amusement park. “Lock the doors, put out an all-points alert! My son is missing!”
If you’ve ever felt that panic, pain and emergency, then you know what God feels like. According to Jesus, the first thing we must understand is that God is a relentless seeker, having lost something of inestimable worth. Look at these pictures Jesus paints:
Picture One:
According to Jesus, God is like a woman who has lost something precious. She is in a panic. She calls out to her husband, “Turn over the sofa, Earl!” She pushes over the nice chairs, pulls up the rug, cleans out the closet, rummages through the trash, takes down the dishes. Finally, after turning the house upside down, she finds her precious coin. She is so overjoyed that she runs next door to tell the neighbors, “I found it, I found it!”
God is like that.
Picture Two:
God is like a rancher, raising a flock of 100 sheep. They will make him a nice living. But on his nightly count, one is missing; he can only account for 99. No big deal, you might say. Any prudent businessperson would say this is an acceptable loss, part of the risk of ranching. He still can make a good living with the 99, right? This shepherd doesn’t think that way. This shepherd cannot sleep because he keeps thinking of the lost sheep alone in the darkness, scared and in danger. This shepherd knows each sheep by name. Extravagantly, this shepherd would rather risk losing his life than risk losing one sheep. So, what does he do? He spends all night running up hill and valley, over rocks and streams, into bushes and caves, in desperate search for that one lost sheep. And when he finds it, he lets out a laugh, grabs the sheep, puts it on his shoulders, and carries it back to the flock. Then he calls all of his friends and neighbors over for a party, because he is so happy at finding his one lost sheep.
God is like that.
Picture Three:
God is like a king who rules a large nation and provides food and land for millions. And yet he goes from town to town, through village and vale, in search of someone who will have lunch with him, who will talk with him, who will sit down and chat. And when he finds a friend, he lavishes a large banquet of delicious meats, cakes and wines and provides the most refreshing and richest conversation.
God is like that.
WHERE IS GOD?
It’s easy for us to picture God just sitting above the clouds, doing nothing, while the world goes up in smoke. So often we think of God as “something up there where humans are not.” But the first thing we must understand is that God is active and alive, seeking and searching. Those who have felt the piercing presence of God through the ages have described him as the Living God! Over and over, Jesus is trying to get us to see that God is restless. He is a relentless seeker, having lost something of incredible value. God is on the move! God turns the tables on us. He is the one that is seeking us first.
Jesus says God is the one doing the seeking, searching for anyone who will worship not just in truth but in their spirit, letting God’s Spirit touch our spirits (John 4:23). Jesus says it is God himself who is “wooing” us (John 6:44); we did not choose God, he chose us (John 15:6).
THE SEEKING GOD
It is not so much that we seek God as He seeks us. Sometimes it seems God is hiding, but he is far more willing to be found than we are to seek him. Before we ever reach up to him, he is reaching down to us. This is what Jesus taught, and it shocked his Jewish audience. But this is what God is like: a God who takes every life seriously, pursuing every last person who ever lived all the days of their life.
This was one of the most offensive things about Jesus. He took every life seriously, including and especially those whom society had written off, the bums, the prostitutes, the gang members, the ones involved in organized crime, the foreigners and immigrants, the ones who are “different.” This is what got under the skin of the religious elite more than anything: “Why does he eat with such scum?” they asked (Mark 2:16). Jesus said their question was ironic—maybe they hadn’t looked in the mirror in a while: “I have come to call sinners, not those who think they are already good enough” (Mark 2:17). Jesus said it succinctly sometime later when going to dinner with a tax collector (who in that day was considered part of organized crime): ““I, the Son of Man, came to seek and to save that which is lost” (Luke 19:10). To Jesus, every person is the loved creation of God, each of us made in the image of God himself! God gives every one of us dignity and worth and wants each of us to know how valuable we are to him. God calls into our hearts and says to each of us, “Turn around and accept my love. Here, put on the robe of dignity and the shoes of acceptance, love, and worth.”
Henri Nouwen put it well:
The question is not ‘How am I to find God?’ but ‘How am I to let myself be found by him?’ The question is not ‘How am I to know God?’ but ‘How am I to let myself be known by God?’ And finally, the question is not ‘How am I to love God? But ‘How am I to let myself be loved by God?’ God is looking into the distance for me, trying to find me, and longing to bring me home. It might sound strange, but God wants to find me as much as, if not more than, I want to find God. I am beginning now to see how radically the character of my spiritual journey will change when I no longer think of God as hiding out and making it as difficult as possible for me to find him, but instead, as the one who is looking for me while I am doing the hiding.[1]
I AM CALLING YOU
In C.S. Lewis’ The Silver Chair, a little girl named Jill and her friend Scrubb are trying to hide from some school bullies. Scrubb then tells Jill of a magical world to which he has gone before, a land called Narnia. So Scrubb and Jill begin begging to somehow slip into Narnia and escape the bullies, and before they know it, they find themselves magically transported. In Narnia, Jill encounters the great lion Aslan (who, in Lewis’ tale, represents Jesus). Aslan says that he has called her out of her world into Narnia for a special task, and she is confused because she doesn’t remember anyone “calling” her into this strange new world. Jill timidly corrects Aslan:
“I was wondering—I mean—could there be some mistake? Because nobody called me and Scrubb, you know. It was we who asked to come here. Scrubb said we were to call to –to Somebody—it was a name I wouldn’t know—and perhaps this Somebody would let us in. And we did, and then we found the door open.”
“You would not have called to me unless I had been calling to you,” said the Lion.[2]
Just as Aslan was calling Jill long before she called out to him, so God has been calling to us long before we ever reached out to him. You would not seek God unless he was seeking you first. We tend to think of God as a subject, something we can “study’ and contemplate, something in a “religion” book that we can take off the shelf when it’s convenient but put back on the shelf when we’re finished. But to understand God as alive and seeking is another matter altogether. C.S. Lewis once wrote that it is always shocking to meet “the Living God” when we thought we were alone in the universe: “There comes a moment when the children who have been playing burglars hush suddenly: was that a real footstep in the hall? There comes a moment when people who have been dabbling at religion (Man’s search for God) suddenly draw back. Supposing we really found Him? We never meant it to come to that! Worse still, supposing He had found us?” [3]
Jesus, God the Seeker, calls out to you:
“Look! Here I stand at the door and knock. If you hear me calling and open the door, I will come in, and we will share a meal as friends.”[4]
You can read more about God the Seeker in my book Meet God (Before You Die), available on Amazon and at https://store.bookbaby.com/book/meet-god-before-you-die.
[1] Nouwen, The Return of the Prodigal Son (New York: Doubleday, 1994), 106.
[2] C.S. Lewis, The Silver Chair (New York: HarperTrophy, 1953), 24-25.
[3] C.S. Lewis, Miracles (New York: Touchstone, 1996), 124–125.
[4] Rev. 3:20.