The Lost by Jill Carattini

Sorry you got this before it was finished - I accidentally hit the enter key.


Take approximately 5 minutes to read this shortened version of yesterday's 'A Slice of Infinity'. Post comments to the blog for spiritual collaboration. Please email your prayer requests too.

Am I a God who is only close at hand?” says the Lord.
“No, I am far away at the same time.
Can anyone hide from me in a secret place?
Am I not everywhere in all the heavens and earth?”
says the Lord. Jeremiah 23:23-24

...I wonder how often I behaved similarly with life, drawing fences around questions that haunt or convictions I don't want to see, hiding sin or sorrow until it is forgotten. How often are we the cause of our own blindness or the hands that work to conceal the thing we need most to see? We are so easily misled by own distractions, lost by our own intentions--while our truest thoughts are like hidden cemeteries in the great worlds we build for ourselves.

For centuries, God has been calling us out of these hidden worlds and lost ways. Since Eden, God has been positing the question to people hiding behind trees: "Where are you?" (Genesis 3:9). As with Adam, it is not for God's sake that God inquires--it is you and I who need to be asked. The Father knows precisely where we are, and yet He seeks the lost, longing to gather them unto Himself like a hen gathers her chicks. To those who are hiding from themselves and from Him, He calls them to love with all their heart, soul, and mind. To those who have forgotten, He urges them to remember. To those who do not see, He moves them to sight. And to those who are lost, the Father sends the Son to save. "For the Son of Man was sent to seek and to save what was lost" (Luke 19:10)