“In the absence of holiness, You are still God. You are steadfast.”

This morning, I prayed with these words from the song Steadfast by singer songwriter Leslie Jordan. A good reminder with everything going on in our world and even in my own head and heart. Because, you see, we are human. We get hooked, we get annoyed, we can hook and annoy other people. Then there is the state of the world and the harm done to real families and earth, our common home, by selfish and misguided individual and collective human action. Yet God is still God. God is steadfast. Always.

God is still God and God is always on the lookout for us, steadfast and in love with these imperfect souls created in the image and likeness of God. God is love, and so this means we are a reflection of this love, created in and for love, and even when we stray from that path, God is there already in love with us, loving us into our fullest being.

In today’s Gospel reading (Luke 15: 1-10), Jesus tells two stories to a group of folks who are complaining about the sinfulness of another group of folks (when they no doubt had their own flaws to contend with). In the first, the story is of a shepherd who leaves 99 sheep alone in the desert to search out for the one who is lost.

And when he does find it,
he sets it on his shoulders with great joy
and, upon his arrival home,
he calls together his friends and neighbors and says to them,
‘Rejoice with me because I have found my lost sheep.’

The second story is of the woman who searches high and low in her house for her lost coin, her treasure. She too rejoices when her seeking ends in the discovery of that which was lost. Jesus tells those gathered around him–and us–“In just the same way, I tell you, there will be rejoicing among the angels of God over one sinner who repents.”

God is love, and God’s love is bigger than our brokenness. In the absence of holiness–in ourselves, in others, in society–God is still God and God’s love is abundant and never ending. God does not give up on us!

I was struck by these words at the end of a reflection on this reading, by Nick Wagner in the book I use for my morning prayer, Give Us this Day:

“These are stories about a God who loves us with wild extravagance. The Divine Seeker refuses to calculate odds or cut losses. God’s love persists beyond reason and celebrates beyond proportion. Jesus invites us to participate in God’s excessive seeking–not because it makes sense, but because the joy of finding transcends all calculation.”

May we who are made in the image and likeness of God, imperfect as we are, strive to mirror God’s excessive seeking for goodness, light, love, and peace. May we never give up on ourselves or one another. May we be steadfast like God is steadfast. Amen.