Faith and Sight

Thanksgiving

Here we are, at Thanksgiving. I do not feel thankful for very many things, unfortunately. Some of my closest friends in the city gathered for a meal today and we were a sorry lot, I tell you. Dead children, haunting pasts, broken hearts, and general ruin, it would appear. My son got lost on the way home from the park down the street, we sent out search parties and found him. A gripping few moments, I assure you. And my sweet daughter didn’t eat anything, anything at all, until late in the day, and then I let her have three pieces of my pumpkin pie instead of proper food. I’m not sure why, other than that’s what she wanted. Pumpkin is a vegetable, right? And there’s milk and eggs in there… it could have been worse. At least it was homemade? Sigh. There was too much wine, for one of us, apparently. Because of that, it did not end particularly well.

But I have searched to find something I am truly thankful for, and I have found that I am thankful for this story, in Luke 15.

“Now the tax collectors and sinners were all drawing near to hear him. And the Pharisees and the scribes grumbled, saying, “This man receives sinners and eats with them.”

So he told them this parable: “What man of you, having a hundred sheep, if he has lost one of them, does not leave the ninety-nine in the open country, and go after the one that is lost, until he finds it? And when he has found it, he lays it on his shoulders, rejoicing. And when he comes home, he calls together his friends and his neighbors, saying to them, ‘Rejoice with me, for I have found my sheep that was lost.’ Just so, I tell you, there will be more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine righteous persons who need no repentance.”

So I am thankful that he was well known for hanging about with ‘sinners,’ and I am thankful that he would seek me, were I to get lost. Am I lost now? Perhaps. And if so, he is looking for me.