Can God lose something?

Have you ever wondered if God could lose something? It is a question that I have been pondering this week as I have been reading and re-reading the Gospel (Luke 15.1-10). And as Luke would have it, there is a male and a female version of this pair of dramas. The shepherd and his lost sheep and the woman who has lost one of her coins. There is a simple rhythm to both stories: loss, searching, finding, and rejoicing.

But it all starts with the religious people taking issue with Jesus and the fact that he invites people who are tax collectors (Roman Government collaborators) and publicly known sinners. Why are the religious folks upset? It is because Jesus shares his table with them and eats with them. Jesus in doing so, makes these others, who in the eyes of civilized society are unacceptable and untouchable, his equals and worse, he hosts them and treats them well. Jesus is not acting like a good rabbi should. He is not acting like a good prophet should and, if he knew God at all, would condemn these traitors and sinners for what they are. And in doing so confirm what every other bible believing person does.

So it is important to remember that God is visiting and redeeming his people and that Jesus has already told them that he has come to call sinners to God, not the righteous. Jesus has come to seek and to save that which has been lost. (Luke 19.10) To illustrate this point, Jesus tells two stories that fit this theme: one about a shepherd who has a sheep wander away and a woman who losses a coin. 

This brings me back to the idea of loss – can God lose something or someone? I think the Scriptures can answer it well, and this was one of the first pieces of Scripture that came to mind:

You have searched me, Lord, and you know me. You know when I sit and when I rise; you perceive my thoughts from afar. You discern my going out and my lying down; you are familiar with all my ways. Before a word is on my tongue you, Lord, know it completely. You hem me in behind and before and you lay your hand upon me. Such knowledge is too wonderful for me, too lofty for me to attain. Where can I go from your Spirit? Where can I flee from your presence? If I go up to the heavens, you are there; if I make my bed in the depths, you are there. If I rise on the wings of the dawn, if I settle on the far side of the sea, even there your hand will guide me, your right hand will hold me fast. If I say, “Surely the darkness will hide me and the light become night around me,” even the darkness will not be dark to you; the night will shine like the day, for darkness is as light to you. For you created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother’s womb. I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; your works are wonderful, I know that full well. My frame was not hidden from you when I was made in the secret place, when I was woven together in the depths of the earth. Your eyes saw my unformed body; all the days ordained for me were written in your book before one of them came to be. How precious to me are your thoughts, God! How vast is the sum of them! Were I to count them, they would outnumber the grains of sand — when I awake, I am still with you. (Psalm 139.1-18 NIV)

This tells us something about the nature of God: He allows for us to have our free will and that means that we can make choices that cause us to move away from him. Maybe someone in the church has hurt us. Maybe we think a prayer went unanswered. Maybe we haven’t be able to sense the presence of God in some time. Whatever the reason (for their may be many and varied reasons) for there being distance between you and God, ask yourself a simple question, “If God feels far away, who moved?” God constantly and consistently acts like the people in the Gospel lesson this week to search out and find those who have wandered away from him. And God searches and draws those people home – even if they leave skid marks on the ground because they dig their heals in – until he carries them in the front door and then call others in the kingdom to come and celebrate with him the return of one who is lost.

The one God brings home has to choose to surrender... that is what is powerful about the sheep around the shepherd’s neck. The shepherd draws the sheep in with this crook. The sheep gets an exam. Twigs, branches and thorns are removed from the wool. Hooves are checked and trimmed. Cuts and wounds are cleansed with wine, anointed with oil and bandaged. Then there is the walk home. Not a free ride exactly. But there is a moment for repentance, to deal with why we walked away in the first place and then he brings us home. It literally means that we are the sheep of his pasture and the people of his hand.

And you might be wondering in this about the flock that got left? They have not moved. They have had the protection of God. They have been doing their thing as they have always done. The Shepherd and the found sheep will come back because shepherds and sheep don’t live in houses.

We have gotten lost. We have gotten sick and injured. And Christ found us. He healed us and made us whole and is bring us home to the Father so that there can be celebration. I know too many Christians who think that God is using a computer to keep track of all the wrongs, mistakes and sins of their lives. We might even be angry enough to say to God, “You were gone. You never really loved me. Was I ever really yours?” Remember that Jesus came to search for and find us, that we could come home to the Father and to the celebration that awaits us. Will we surrender to the Saviour? Will we be drawn home? We cannot be lost. God knows where each and all of us are and he is coming to us.

Jason+