“Within a short time you will lose sight of Me, but soon after that you shall see Me again.”

Do we grieve over Christ's death?  Do we even feel the apparent absence of Jesus in our daily lives today?  It is not that Jesus is missing, the difficulty is that we have let Jesus disappear from our lives by paying Him no real attention. 

Sometimes that is only a matter of clinging to popular images of Jesus or to understandings of Him that were more appropriate when we were children; we can move on from Santa Claus and Jack Frost, but have we learned to seek a Jesus – and a personal relationship with Him, His Father, and His Spirit – that is more fitting to our maturity? 

Hungering and thirsting for Jesus is not all fun; it calls for our entering the darker places in our lives and dealing with all the nitty gritty of who we have chosen to be, but unless we do that we can never recognize Him when He lets us feel His presence and activity in our lives and in our world.

It actually doesn't matter in some ways.  Seeking and finding God is certainly a matter of missed opportunities as we look at our lives, but that is one wonderful thing about God: no matter what we have done or what we have made of ourselves by ignoring Him, He is always right there where we are – and we are at that moment – to help us find Him and to know His compassion and forgiveness.  We do not have to meet any requirements for Him to be willing to hear us and to heal us and draw us to Him. 

But taking that path is for those who believe in doing things at the last minute, like the imprudent virgins of Matthew 25:1-13.

Maybe we could pray especially hard today to find Him where He is, right now, close to us in His Spirit.  And pray that the Good Shepherd might lift us, in our weakness and ignorance, and carry us home to His Father's house.