In his book Jesus Among Other  Gods, Ravi Zacharias tells a story about a girl who became hopelessly lost in a dark and dense forest. She called and screamed but to no avail. Her alarmed parents and a group of volunteers searched frantically for her. When darkness fell, they had to give up for the night.

Early the next morning the girl’s father returned to the forest to search for her and spied her fast asleep on a rock. He called her name and ran towards her. Startled awake, she threw her arms out to him. As he picked her up and hugged her, she repeated over and over, “Daddy, I found you!”

Applying this story to Mary Magdalene’s search for Jesus in John 20, Zacharias comments: “Mary discovered the most startling truth of all when she came looking for the body of Jesus. She did not realise that the person she had found was the One who was risen, and that He had come looking for her.”

We who believe in Jesus sometimes speak of ‘finding’ Him. But why did we seek Him in the first place? Because like the shepherd who went out into the darkness to find one lost sheep, God seeks us. He is waiting for us to realise that we are lost and reach out to Him. He will pick us up, embrace us and give us His peace.

When we find Christ, we discover that we were the ones who were lost.

Author

Herbert Vander Lugt

Topics

Our Daily Bread