Luke 15:6-7 — And when he cometh home, he calleth together his friends and neighbors, saying unto them, Rejoice with me; for I have found my sheep which was lost. I say unto you, that likewise joy shall be in heaven over one sinner that repenteth, more than over ninety and nine just persons, which need no repentance.

Remember the other day I said I had an idea for a devotion, but that it would have to wait for a few days? Well, here it is.
A few days ago some of my credit cards went missing. It set off a frantic hunt. You’ve been there right? Look through the clothes I’d been wearing, search the drawers, call the cafe I had lunch at … I looked everywhere. Myra got in on the act. She’s a great hunter with a terrific imagination.
As we hunted, the parables Jesus told about searching for the lost came to mind. You know the ones — the lost coin, the lost son and this one, the lost sheep.
Of course I was desperate and Jesus definitely wasn’t — desperate … He’s the perfect God-man, always in control!
Of course the other parallels between my situation and the three “loss” parables aren’t exact either. Consider the causes of the lost items going astray. My credit cards went astray because of my carelessness or at best (being kind to myself) because of misfortune. The coin just rolled away. The son was lost through his own folly. The sheep got lost because — like many of us — it saw the grass and thought that it could find better grazing away from the shepherd.
The size of the loss was, for me, unknown — but the losses in the parables are exact — one coin, one son, one sheep.
Unfortunately for me there’s another difference. The coin, the son and the sheep were all recovered. My cards have not been — I’ve had to cancel them.
Actually, that last one is the real difference. I gave up … I stopped searching. In the three parables the Father, the woman who lost the coin, and the shepherd never gave up. Jesus never gives up. He keeps looking for that lost sinner — that one in a hundred — until the last possible moment.
I’ve always loved the story of the lost sheep. At least, I have since I got saved. I can look back and see that Jesus kept looking for me. There were several moments in my life when I might have become a Christian but turned away. He kept coming after me. I love to think that on that day when I surrendered there was one of those parties in Heaven.