the tindog coffeehouse

This weekend we watched the Liam Neeson movie Taken.  In the movie, Neeson’s estranged daughter (played by Maggie Grace) is kidnapped while vacationing in Paris.  Neeson then spends the remainder of the movie tracking her down before she’s lost forever.

Although the movie isn’t necessarily meant to have a Christian message, I couldn’t help but to think about how it is a perfect analogy for our relationship with God.  We often talk about the need to seek forgiveness for our sins and come back to God, and that’s true.  But we forget that God isn’t just sitting idly by while we wander off.  He’s actively pursuing us, just as Neeson’s character pursued his daughter.

In the parable of the lost sheep (Matthew 18:12-14), Jesus said:

If a man has a hundred sheep and one of them wanders away, what will he do?  Won’t he leave the ninety-nine others on the hills and go out to search for the one that is lost?  And if he finds it, I tell you the truth, he will rejoice over it more than over the ninety-nine that didn’t wander away!  In the same way, it is not my heavenly Father’s will that even one of these little ones should perish.

This isn’t a picture of a callous supernatural being who sits around waiting for his worshippers to return to him.  No, this is a heavenly Father who loves His children and will stop at nothing to get us back.  This is a Father who loved us enough to give Himself up on the cross to pay the penalty for our stupid mistakes, a Father who has declared war on our kidnappers, just as Neeson’s character declared war on his daughter’s.  Titus 3:5 says that God “saved us, not because of the righteous things we had done, but because of His mercy.”

The question, then, isn’t whether we’re too lost to be rescued.  The only question is whether we want to be rescued at all.

The earth moves and you find me
Alive but unworthy
Broken and empty, but you don’t care
‘Cause you are my rapture, you are my savior
When all my hope is gone, I reach for you
You are my rescue

– Seabird, “Rescue”