Perhaps today, you may visit someone who has long been away from the Church? God will be much happier if you are leave yourself and seek out a one other brother or sister, a single child of God, for great is the size and the importance of that person to the Lord.
“I say unto you, that there will be more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine righteous persons who need no repentance” (Luke 15.7).
The “Gospel of Mercy”, this how we understand the fifteenth chapter of Luke’s Gospel, the extreme manifestation of God’s mercy. Today, we will look at the shepherd who has ninety-nine sheep and loses one of them, or with the woman having ten pieces of silver and lost one.
You know, my brethren, God does not look at wholesale or retail. He sees the single individual and personal. Do not think that you are less important, because already there is a crowd following the Lord, including many people who are in the service of Him. Not true! As the shepherd does not want any of his sheep go astray, our Father does not want to lose any of His children. Therefore, each, in particular, is important in the eyes of God our Father!
We are called many times to put aside what we have to go in search of what we do not have. How about today? Can you visit someone who has long been away from the Church? For one reason or another, that person was disappointed, did not feel fed in his or her faith, the person let heaviness speak louder laziness or anything else and walked away from the house of the Father.
We who are on the walk, we can not get carried away by indifference, we need to go after that person, knocking on her door. But we need not be boring, inconvenience them, but we need to be friendly, brotherly and a loving presence in the lives of that brother and sister, friend and the friend who, for some reason, is far from God.
The Lord needs us to go in search of the sheep and the lost coin! We need often leave what we already are doing and those that we already have for God, to go in search of that one child. Sometimes we think that the most important work is that of being the only one talking to many people, with those in the group who participated, but God will be much happier if you are able to get out of yourself and reach out to a single other, that one child of God because great is the size and the importance of him or her to the Father!
Care for each other, but do not forget those who are far away from the house of the Lord.
God bless you!
Father Roger Araujo
Priest of the New Song (Canção Nova) Community, journalist and contributor to the Canção Nova Portal.https://www.facebook.com/rogeraraujo.cn