The Lost Shoe

Another and final Radio Devotion

I lost my ONE of my most favorite, comfortable shoes….I did Not loose both of them, just the one, the left one…….. I joked with my husband that I really am Cinderella, except that my prince did not find the lost shoe, he didn’t think that was funny.

I have looked everywhere for it, I looked under the bed, I found a lot of   dust bunnies, an earing, some socks that have been missing since last spring, but no shoe….

I looked in the laundry room, lots of dirty laundry, but no shoe.

I looked in the bathroom, no shoe.

I looked in the closet…why would a shoe be in the closet….it was not, but there were a few other shoes in there, but not my favorite, most comfortable one.

I still don’t know where that shoe is. I need it now that the weather is getting colder and I am the kind of person that when I find a comfy shoe, that is what I wear ALL THE TIME. I don’t have hundreds of shoes….I don’t need hundreds of shoes….some people do and that is ok…..All summer and during this wonderful, warm fall, I have been wearing my sandals, and have not been wearing that pair of shoes……, but it was raining on this day and I needed my shoe…

I will not give up looking for it, I know it is somewhere in my house and eventually it will turn up and I will not stop looking until it is found….

Kind of reminds me of a story…..about a shepherd, a herd of sheep and this one sheep who got lost.

Once there was a shepherd who had a herd of 100 sheep. The shepherd’s job was to make sure all the sheep were safe, healthy, and that no harm would come to them. As long as they were together they would all be protected.

But one day, one of the sheep wandered into the wilderness. Just one…how important was just one? After all there still were 99 sheep left in the safety of the fold.

The shepherd did an amazing thing, the shepherd went into the wilderness, found the missing sheep and brought that ONE home again.

There are a couple of things that amaze me about this story. The first is how the shepherd could leave the 99. Was he not concerned about them? Of course he was….but they were together and they were safe. There is safety in numbers, that was how the shepherd could leave for a little while….he left them together and they were safe. That is why Christians gather together regularly to worship and praise God on Sunday morning AND in all the other times that the Body is gathered. That is why congregations of the faithful are so important.

The second thing is how much the shepherd cared about that one sheep…..it was not because that sheep was the most special, or most talented, or destine to do great things…..that sheep was ordinary …. And it could have been any one of the other 99 sheep.

The shepherd would have gladly went and found any of them, one at a time. So why did the shepherd do that, why would the shepherd risk injury to himself, to go into that dangerous place for an ordinary, stubborn, smelly, stupid, sheep that wandered off.…He went because of love.  He went because he loved each one of those sheep that much. In the shepherd’s eyes each of those sheep were special, needed, and loved.

God loves each of us that much too. God is with us in the good times and has gone ahead of us into the bad….

And when we are lost and when we wander away, God looks for us until we are found….just like a favorite shoe.