"What man of you, having a hundred sheep, if he has lost one of them, does not leave the ninety-nine in the wilderness, and go after the one which is lost, until he finds it?"

Jesus must have asked that with a straight face and a barely suppressed smile.

The answer is that none of them would have risked the health of ninety-nine sheep to find one stupid one that got itself lost! No one in their right mind would act so impulsively.

But the Good Shepherd would, Jesus tells them and us. He would look, the story goes, "until he finds it." Nothing would stop the search. Nothing would impede the relentless quest for the lost one. God never stops searching. Never stops loving. Never.

Never.

How that Good News must have burned in the Pharisees' ears and, too often and too sadly, in our own as well. There is, according to Jesus, nothing that can ever stop that heavenly love, that amazing grace.

There is something else. There is a message to those ninety-nine left waiting.

God loves them, too.

Obedient, faithful, trusting ninety-nine. God cherishes them as much as the one that is lost. God’s love is equally extravagant with the lost and the found because it is the nature of God to love. That is what God does.

For those of us sitting around with the ninety-eight other sheep, that is what we need to remember. To be the church is to remember that our God is always loving us while always searching out others to love.