WDJA (What Did Jesus Ask?) III: Who will not leave the 99 to find the one?
September 22, 2024 • William A. Evertsberg • Matthew 18:10–14
But as someone put it, “the one statistically unimportant wanderer means everything to this shepherd. Human thinking says ‘Let it go; we have 99.’ God’s thinking is, ‘there were 100; where is my one.’ Jesus is trying to convert us to the mentality of the one, to the importance of the statistically unimportant.”#_ftn1
Sometimes we get this right, this mentality of the one. Sometimes we pour all our energy into the straggler. You might have one child you can ignore from mewling infancy to sensible adulthood. You don’t have to say a word to her, you practically don’t have to think about her, and she’ll still win the state championship in lacrosse and get a scholarship to Northwestern and become a brain surgeon. Meanwhile her younger brother has trouble reading and making friends and has you scurrying around from teacher to therapist to private tutor.
#_ftnref1Frederick Dale Bruner, Matthew: A Commentary, vol. 2: The Churchbook (Grand Rapids, MI: Wm. B. Eerdmans, first published 1990, revised 2004), p. 219.