...and Found

The summer before my freshman year of high school I traveled with my youth group to CHIC 2K in Tennessee.  The conference was awesome!  I made really good friends that week, in fact, several of them  turned out to be life-long friends.  Lost and Found played for the conference.  They were a little weird, but tons of fun to listen to!  At the time, I did not know how much the name of their band would change my life! 

The concept of being found is very prevalent in Luke 15.  In my last post, I mentioned when a word or phrase is repeated in scripture, it means the word/phrase is an important one.  The word "found" occurs just as many times as the word "lost" in this chapter.  What strikes me the most about this concept of being found is in the verb tense of the word.

When a person or thing becomes found, the person or thing lost has no power over it.  Being found means the subject is passive through the process.  I have no control over when or in what state I am found in.  Within Luke 15, I am struck by the passive meaning behind the finding of the Prodigal Son.  Before this in depth study of the chapter, I always assumed the son played a role in his being found.  As I read deeper though, I find the son is still lost even as he approaches the home of his father.  I believe the son does not realize he has been found until he is met by the father.  When the Prodigal is in the foreign land, feeding pigs, he comes to a decision about how he can restore his relationship with his father.  When the two meet however, the father has a different plan in mind.  The father immediately restores his son; no strings attached.  In this moment, I believe the son has been found.

In my life I have tried to restore my relationship with God on my own.  I have come up with plans, and I have failed in most, actually all, of those plans.  Until I accepted God's unconditional love for me and accepted His desire to have a relationship with me, I was never found. 

How about you?  Are you allowing yourself to be found this Christmas season, or are you trying to restore your relationships your way?

In His service, Crazy Pete