So many of us see the “lost” people in our lives as irretrievably so. They’re out of reach. They’ve been too far gone for far too long. Your children have so much sin in their lives. Your grandkids don’t even believe in God anymore. Your husband has left the Lord and has no desire to return. Your old college roommate is in a really dark place. Your niece is in a horrible place. You’ve tried. You’ve talked to them. You’ve studied with them. You’ve prayed. Oh, my word, you’ve prayed. You’ve tried everything. You just don’t think anybody can reach her. You don’t think anyone can get to him.

Hey. Our God can reach her. Our God can get to him.

Remember our God’s promise in Ezekiel 34: I will search. I will rescue. I will bring them in. I will gather them up. Our God goes into the darkest and most horrible places to breathe his life into death. That’s why he sent Jesus, to show us in person that this is what our God is all about.

Jesus tells those stories in Luke 15 so we clearly get the picture. As long as there is one single lost coin buried in the dirt in the corner of a dark house, I will not stop until it is found. As long as there is one single lost lamb wandering alone out there in the wilderness, I will not quit until it is found. Every single coin, every single sheep, every single lost son or lost daughter.

Where is your grandson? Where is your nephew or your friend at school?

God won’t go there to get him? Jesus won’t go there?

Jesus goes through a storm across the sea into a pagan cemetery in the Gerasenes to give life to a naked man with no name tied to a tombstone. Jesus pulls Peter out of a boatload of despair and breathes his Spirit into him. He goes to an out of the way well outside a Samaritan village to forgive a sinful woman. He grabs a hated tax collector out of a tree. Why? Because Jesus says he came to seek and save the lost!

Christ Jesus went to the darkest and most hopeless place of all. He went to his own death on the cross for your loved one. He was buried in a cold tomb for three days for your loved one. He went there to seek and to save your lost! There is no place on this earth he won’t go. The early Church would say there is no place in hell Christ Jesus won’t go–didn’t go!–to seek and save the lost! He can find your missing person!

Can these bones live? O Sovereign Lord, you alone know. And you alone are able.

Peace,

Allan