All photos courtesy of Unsplash
In September 2021, a man in Turkey was drinking with friends, left them, and walked off into a nearby forest, where he spent the night. The next morning, he noticed a group of people, who told him that they were looking for a missing person. Desiring to be helpful, he joined the search. After some time, a member of the search party called out his name, and he responded, “I am here”. Only then did the truth become apparent to all: his family had reported him missing when he failed to return home, volunteers had set out to look for him, and, by joining one of the groups, he was, without knowing it, trying to find himself!
There were two reasons why it took so long for the man to be found: firstly, he did not know that he was lost, and, secondly, the search party did not know the one for whom they were looking, except for his name. The story is amusing, but for me the smile did not last long, for it soon came to my mind that this man is like many in the world today, whom the Bible describes as “lost”. In fact, that is the natural state of all mankind. Like the man in the story, we have wandered away, not from our friends, but from God. Isaiah 53.6 says, “All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned every one to his own way”. In Luke chapter 15, to illustrate our lost condition, and our need to be found, the Lord Jesus also compares us to a lost sheep, as well as to a lost coin and a lost son.
