Continuing on from yesterday’s post . . .  Our journey to God is so much like that of the prodigal son’s.  We start to turn home-ward, only to find that God is already there, coming to us.  The sheep gets lost, and the Shepherd goes out to find it–sometimes even before the sheep realizes that it is lost.

As we are searching for God, the good news is that God is searching for us.  Better yet, he has found us.  The great question is not whether we have found God but whether we have found ourselves being found by God.  God is not lost.  We were, or, as the case may be, we are. . . . Here is what St. Paul says: “It is full time now for you to wake from sleep.”  He is telling us to wake up the gift already given.  This season of the Church’s calendar is called Advent, which means “coming”.  Christ came, Christ comes, Christ will come again.  There is no time–past, present, or future–in which Jesus the Christ is not God with us.  He was with you yesterday, is with you today, and will be with you tomorrow.  So we are invited to give up our searching and let ourselves be found by the One who wants to be with us, and to have us with him, forever.    (Fr. Richard John Neuhaus, God With Us, pp. 18-19)