I am Lost; I am Found
February 23, 2024 | By Joaquin Rivera Cornell ‘25
image description: a worn basketball rests on the floor in grayscale
Remembering God’s Rejoicing Over Our Salvation
A Lost and Found restored my faith in humanity. Somehow, after a late night session of basketball, I had left a pair of black pants, a red shirt with a Roman eagle on it, and my water bottle at the gym.
I actually did not realize that I was missing anything until the next morning when I was reaching for the spot on my backpack where my water bottle should be. It was not there. In that instant, pessimism washed over me, and I told myself that it was over. It was almost a certainty that someone took my dear water bottle and that I would never recover it.
It was only the day after that I sprung into action. I still thought it was very likely that someone had taken my clothes and water bottle for themselves, but I had to try. I ran over to the gym the first thing that morning and was utterly disappointed. It wasn’t even open until much later that day. So, I spent the day going about my daily tasks and reflecting on the hopelessness of my situation. It’s been two whole days since I left everything there. Surely it’s all gone. Do people even give things to the Lost and Found these days?
Later that day, I walked back to the now-open gym. With a less than enthusiastic tone, I gave the worker at the front desk the laundry list of items. “I left a red shirt, black pants, and a grey water bottle.” A brief pause. He flipped through a logbook. “I think…I think we have all of that.”
I was overjoyed. Everything that was lost was indeed found. At first, my mind calculated the monetary value of my belongings that I had just regained, but quickly I realized that the items meant so much more. The shirt was a birthday present. The pants were my favorite to wear, and I can’t really describe why. But, through this all, I realized that I was an imperfect owner of my clothes.
The Psalm from today’s lectionary describes a hopeful posture of waiting for the Lord:
“ I wait for the Lord; my soul waits for him;
in his word is my hope.
My soul waits for the Lord,
more than watchmen for the morning,
more than watchmen for the morning.” [1]
The Psalm describes how there is redemption and mercy with the Lord, and how the Lord’s enemies will not stand. There is a deep sense of a personal relationship between the Psalmist and God. The Psalmist can do nothing on their own to save them from their situation.
The Gospel reading from the lectionary likewise emphasizes the insufficiency of man, as Jesus tells the people “I tell you, unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.” [2]
As all analogies are, this one is imperfect, but my little clothes incident shed valuable insight on what it means to be lost, and what it means to be found by God. My clothes were entirely insufficient on their own to make their way back to me. And I was certainly not God-like in my initial response. When I realized that the one water bottle was lost, I threw up my hands and said “Oh well.” And even when I tried to find them, I was half-hearted and pessimistic.
A parable that Jesus gives in Luke 15 likens his mission of loving sinners to a shepherd who loses 1 sheep out of his 100 and wholeheartedly seeks the return of this one sheep. [3] Upon finding the sheep, the shepherd is overcome with indescribable joy. I felt just a fraction of that joy when I recovered my belongings, how much more so do the angels rejoice when one sinner is saved?
But there is one more part to the picture. It’s the student who found my clothes and gave them to the front desk. It’s the person working the front desk who took the clothes, recorded them in the logbook, and put them in a locker. It’s the other worker who received me and told me that all would be well. Multiple actors along the way helped my clothes return to where they needed to be.
We are insufficient to be in a relationship with a Holy God through our own actions, but perhaps we are the instruments that God uses to help guide others to him. The person next to us in class, the dining hall staff serving our food, or even our professors in class are all people made in the image of God, and we have an opportunity to be part of the process of showing them the light of Christ.
This Lent season, may we realize anew the deep joy that God experiences when sinners come back to him, and reflect on our own joy that we receive in being found and loved by the one we belong to. May this galvanize us to point others to him so that they may experience that joy too.
References:
[1] Psalm 130: 4-5
[2] Matthew 5:21
[3] Luke 15