Thoughts from the Rectory

 for October 2025

Dear Friends

How far would you go to find something that was valuable or loved but that was lost? I invite you just to ponder that question for a moment.

I often misplace my keys, my phone, my wallet and even over those mundane items, I feel a certain sense of panic and powerlessness as I simply cannot find them (embarrassingly after some period of huffing and puffing around the house they are usually right where I left them). But what if something far more valuable was lost, how much more would I search?

Jesus shared a story about a shepherd who had 100 sheep, which indicated that this shepherd was probably looking after the sheep of several families. Unfortunately, this shepherd somehow managed to lose one of these sheep. The story goes that the shepherd searched high and low for the missing sheep and eventually found it, picked it up, put it over their shoulders and carried it back to the village in joyful celebration. What was lost was now found.

Jesus told the story to answer a judgemental question that the Pharisees were asking, for he was spending time with people whom the religious rulers believed were unworthy unlovable lost to God, mired in sin and often in collusion with Roman oppressors. These people deserved to be lost, ridiculed and judged, but Jesus viewed these people differently. He saw them as sheep who had got lost on along the way, valuable and precious and needing a good shepherd to bring them back home.

My guess is that we all have experienced times of being lost. Lost in our own minds with our anxieties and illness, lost because of words we have said, the attitudes we have held or things we have done. I hope we also have experienced the goodness, mercy ad love of being found.

If we know something of what it is like to feel lost and found ourselves, perhaps each one of us is also called by God to be like good shepherds, seeking out others who need our love and care, what wisdom we have to offer, a generosity of spirit and a hope for the future. A family member, a friend, neighbour, resident, visitor or foreigner. The question is whether we will judge and criticise or have the compassion and the courage to be like a good shepherd who realising one is missing, searches until the missing is brought back into the fold where all can live a life of blessing once again.

God bless,
Jonathan