One
Saturday Morning Men’s Prayer Breakfast. Twelve men sat down and shared a meal together.
Scrambled eggs, biscuits, gravy, bacon, sausage, fried apples, fresh sliced tomatoes. Coffee, juice the food was every bit as tasteful as it was nourishing. Small conversations went on as we ate and then as we neared the end of our meal our song leaders got up and prepared to sing the hymns that Dick Thomas has selected.
This morning as in all of our breakfasts I had my phone with me and was going to video the singing and the message that Jim Best would deliver.
But instead of recording it. I went ‘Live’ on Facebook. I was a little late getting started, but not much. The singing was sweet and moving. Almost immediately as I watched my screen I saw the little icon come up that showed how many active viewers were watching on line.
One.
One person was watching the event with us. Where they were or who they might have been we don’t know. But one person was there signified by a white numeral one on a red background.
Two. After a moment, the little white number changed to a two and then it dropped back down to a one again.
Just one.
I continued to listen to Jim’s message as I watched the number rise and fall. It reached as high as four or five and then fell back to one.
One.
The thought occurred to me that ‘one’ is more important than twenty or thirty. That one person sitting at home or wherever they were wanted to hear the word. They needed to hear the word.
They were important.
They may have been just one but they were the one that Jesus left the flock to find. That message that Jim was delivering was probably meant for just that one. The parable of the lost sheep came to mind. Matthew 18 verses 11-14. Jesus tells us how important that each one of is:
For the Son of man is come to save that which was lost. How think ye? if a man have an hundred sheep, and one of them be gone astray, doth he not leave the ninety and nine, and goeth into the mountains, and seeketh that which is gone astray? And if so be that he find it, verily I say unto you, he rejoiceth more of that sheep, than of the ninety and nine which went not astray. Even so it is not the will of your Father which is in heaven, that one of these little ones should perish.
One.
Doesn’t it make you feel loved that you are that ‘one’? Does it not warm your heart to know that Jesus is searching to find you – to find that one lost sheep?
It does me. I am so happy that he didn’t give up on me, that he didn’t stay with the 99.
Instead he went looking for one.