Being found

Losing something adds lot of pain to us. That pain may begin to reshape our life. It may be something very precious to our life. It may be a separation of a person, or a distance created in a relationship. Out of many experiences of love, one that we really experience deeply is the aspect of being found again, being accepted, and embraced. Other side of it is that we find something that has been lost. 

Three parables in Luke 15 tell us the joy God has in finding us. A key to understand the good news Jesus shares with us is the very human relationships we have in our lives. Though not perfect in life, our own  love, pain, betrayal, longing, thirst and so on are the doors to understand the way that God loves us. Having sufficient trust in order to believe in that love gradually leads us to experience the constant accompaniment of God. However sinful, broken, or destroyed we are, God walks with us is a reality. It is not that God comes to save us when we are in a crisis. God has been walking with us all through. Why, then, he did not intervene when the wrong happened? Actually there is no answer. Perhaps, God suffered vulnerability with us. But God is the source of life, and life assures new beginning. We can have sure confidence in the grace that is shining deep within ourselves as a dim light.

It is in letting ourselves to be found we can experience being found by God. This letting ourselves is on openness towards life, letting ourselves to be found as a brother/sister, father/mother, son/daughter, as the beloved, as a friend. We too extend ourselves to find 'them' once again into our life. Then there is an experience of joy in life, and an experience of God finding us, and finding God once again as source of our lives.

Celebration is not in spending, celebration is the sharing of joy. That is the challenge these parables place before us. The challenge is that whether we are able to share in the joy of God, to share in the joy of someone who has found what was lost, to share in the joy that someone has of being found by God or one's beloved ones. The righteousness of the Pharisees and Scribes in the Gospels had corrupted them in such a way that they were reluctant to celebrate.