Search-and-Rescue

A routine flight from Malaysia to China has gone missing with no explanation since March 8. The search has involved a dozen nations and is featured in news all over the world every day.  Passengers and crew totaled 239, from 14 nations. Their relatives, and many of us with them, have been hoping, praying, and waiting for three weeks now in hope
of their rescue.

I wonder: how many millions of dollars have been dedicated to this effort, in fuel, aircraft and sailing ship time, and the time of hundreds of searchers and supporters,? How much would that be per passenger? Yet while there is any sort of hope, we don't give up! 

That sort of determination, where the cost doesn't matter so long as we get the results, comes straight from the heart of God himself. In Luke 19:10, Jesus said about himself, "the Son of Man came to seek and save the lost." Jesus came to seek out the lost, and he said this in the home of a notorious tax collector, a man whom many figured had robbed his fellow Jews and made himself rich while selling them out to the Roman occupiers. He also came to save the lost, and he did that by giving himself as a sacrifice on his cross. John Piper reminds us, as we look at Colossians 2:14, that it wasn't a sheet of parchment with a debt record on it that was nailed to the cross -- it was Jesus himself.

This was the Son of God, giving his life for all humanity.  How much would the life of God be worth, on a per-person basis? There's no way to calculate it. But he's already done it, so seek and find and save all of us. And he will never give up, because with God, there is always hope.