13.04 The shepherd finds

“He goes after that which is lost until he find it!* When the shepherd has gone forth nothing daunts him, nothing stops his course: he goes on until he finds. Before the Good Shepherd who came forth on that first Christmas morning, as He lay in His mother’s arms, what a weary stretch of travelling lay! The journeyings to and fro wherein “the Son of Man had not where to lay his head,” the long vigils on the mountains, the weariness and disappointment, the betrayal by His disciples, the agony in the garden, the shame of Calvary, and that last and awful desert void of the very sense of the Father’s presence, from which the cry rose, “My God, my God, why hast Thou forsaken me?” The seeker had gone so far that He was, as it were, identified with the pain of the lost. He made all that long journey so that no one lost anywhere in the desert of sin or sorrow should ever doubt but that the Shepherd was at hand Who had gone after him until He found him.

There is no distance from which by the power of His redeeming grace we may not make our return to God.

There is, indeed, one limit, though only one, which the Good Shepherd Himself cannot overpass it is the limit of man’s own consent to be found and restored. He cannot find the soul which to the end, in spite of all His seeking, says, “I will not have Thee.” We dare not assert, whatever we may dare to hope, there will be no one “finally lost.” All we can say is it not enough? is that whatever infinite Love can do to bring back every single wanderer will be done. Can we not trust to the uttermost a Love which showed the measure of its longing on the Cross?

TAGS: [Parables]