Every year I take the boxes of Christmas decorations out of the garage and begin to take the decorations out of their packaging and arrange the house. I bought this shepherd, star and sheep at a craft fair several years ago in honor of my husband being a Pastor.

Every year at the beginning of the Christmas season I pull the star and the shepherd out of one box and then can’t find the sheep. Each year I vow to pack them together so that they don’t get lost and each year at the end of the season for some strange reason they don’t get put back together. I have a lot of ornaments and it takes time to find the sheep. One year, I found it on top of the guest room closet after going back out to the garage sure that I had missed a box. Go figure that one out. I’m still trying to figure out how that happened as well.

Everything stops as I go looking for this lost sheep. I don’t move forward with the decorating because it bugs me that I’ve lost it again this year. It reminded me of a story in the bible as I was looking all over this sheep.

Luke 15:3. Then Jesus told them this parable:
4. “Suppose one of you has a hundred sheep and loses one of them. Does he not leave the ninety-nine in the open country and go after the lost sheep until he finds it?
5. And when he finds it, he joyfully puts it on his shoulders
6. and goes home. Then he calls his friends and neighbors together and says, ‘Rejoice with me; I have found my lost sheep.’
7. I tell you that in the same way there will be more rejoicing in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine righteous persons who do not need to repent.

I have 100’s of ornaments but I look for this one each year. I stop everything I am doing to find it. What is it about sheep that get lost? The feeling of finally finding it gives me great joy as I call out “Found it!”

This Christmas when I found the sheep I put it in its place next to the Shepherd and I thanked the Lord. The not-so-simple little feat of leaving the other sheep behind to go off and find me when I was lost is not wasted on me. The fact that the angels rejoice when one is found takes my breath away. Think about it, what is one in 6 billion people? Yet, everything stops as the God of the Universe sends his only begotten son to earth to search and to find that one that was lost? Then he carefully restored that sheep to stand next to the shepherd where he was called to be all along.