Baaaaaaaaaaaaaaa

The act of seeking is often romanticized these days, both for the seeker & for the one being sought. Living in a time that considers itself time starved, the luxury of seeking is something that many may look at as time spent staring at one’s navel when the answer is right in front of us. A friend reminds me that one person’s seeking is another’s fool’s errand.

Looking at this parable of searching struck a chord in me – it made me think about the search from 2 other perspectives:

A Waiting Sheep’s Perspective

She’s gone looking again. There are 99 of us here and she goes off looking for that idiot, who is always getting in trouble, always leaving the flock. Just let that idiot go, cut your losses and get going with the rest of us. It’s not like this is the first time she has left us all to go searching – of all the shepherds I’ve had, she wastes the most time going off on wild chases.

The Ranch Owner’s Perspective

That’s it – I am going to have to let her go. She was supposed to be here hours ago and now I hear tell that she is wandering around searching for that mangy one she loves. This is a business, for God’s sake – I can not afford to have my time & money poured away by some bleeding heart shepherd. I told her the last time that this happened that I paid her to be efficient, not to fall in love with her flock.

I’ve spent most of my adult life seeking acceptance, seeking acquisition, seeking definition as the provider. Something changed for me over the past 5 years or so – that search just seemed empty, fake and selfish. Now I find myself more like the mangy lost sheep, less like the waiting sheep or the ranch owner. My life feels awfully inefficient, like a fool’s errand, making trouble for the rest of the flock.

God seeks us - we are the sought.

[grid blog :: advent 1]