First Week in Advent – Day 5 – Hope for All
When God sent his son into the world, we don’t see anywhere the instruction, “Don’t waste your time on the hopeless.” As far as the biblical witness is concerned, no one was written off, no one was off-limits, no one was beyond the reach of God’s love, no one was outside the circle of grace. This is the basic assumption of Scripture and the clear agenda in Jesus’ ministry. There was no “lostness” that was beyond the possibility of “being found.” Jesus never met a hopeless case. He never said, “I don’t have time to waste on this unredeemable situation.”
Ronald Higdon, Building Bridges in a World of Crumbling Connections, pp. 24-25
God’s grace, mercy, and love have always been seeking those whose lostness takes many forms and has many dimensions: lost from purpose, lost in self-centeredness, lost from meaningful relationships, lost in anger and fear, lost in addiction, lost in despair and hopelessness, lost in missing God’s mark for life, lost in falling short of the glory that God has placed within each human life. There is no lostness that is not on the list of God’s seeking and his ability to save. Jesus took over the agenda of the Father’s reconciling purposes when he came to pitch his tent among us (John 1:14).
