Let’s begin by the sea. There is a man standing there. His name is Yasuo Takamatsu, and he is looking for his wife, Yuko. He has been looking for her since March 11, 2011. That was the day the tsunami of Japan swept her and 15,890 of her fellow countrymen away. Yasuo first searched on land in the terrible devastation and chaos. He started on the small hill where she had been last seen. From there he carefully walked up and down the beaches, swiveling his head from side to side, looking for her face or her haircut. He then circled out to hospitals, elementary schools, hotels, and other evacuation points, past trains that lay twisted on a hillside, past a car dangling from a fifth-story window, and eventually to forests and mountains around the site. As of today, over six years later, he is still looking for his wife, only now, with scuba lessons behind him, Yasuo is turning his search toward the sea.

From the 23rd Psalm, “The Lord is my shepherd.” From the 40th chapter of Isaiah, “He will tend his flock like a shepherd. He will gather the lambs in his arms.” From the 34th chapter of Ezekiel, “Behold, I myself will search for my sheep and will seek them out.” Do you see a pattern here? When our Lord Jesus Christ appeared on earth, as the Scripture says, in the fullness of time, many souls could believe in him because they had been prepared by the Old Testament Scriptures to look for a shepherd: to look for a messiah whose identifying characteristic would be looking for them. “Search for the searcher,” the Scriptures proclaimed. “Seek for the seeker.” How will you discern the true Messiah from all the false messiahs? From the look of concern on his face.

The dive shop where Yasuo learned to scuba keeps maps and records of his searches, recording each shore, each depth. Sometimes a team of divers will search the same place twice, because ocean currents often turn up new debris and new bodies. On one of his dives, Yasuo found a clock, stopped forever at the moment of the tsunami. He sometimes feels an intuition: “She must be around here. She must be over there.” Local officials have tried to accommodate his requests for repeated searches, but because of fishing routes or portions of the coastlines off-limits due to dangerous conditions, the search is complicated. Many survivors of the tsunami have moved on, having tried to make some kind of uneasy peace or denial with the tragedy. But there he is, alone and still at it, still searching.

There is a tension in this biblical image of Christ as the Good Shepherd. On the one hand, Matthew’s gospel, chapter 18, portrays a shepherd who will leave the 99 sheep that are safe in the pen to search for the one sheep who is lost in the wilderness. And when he finds that lost sheep, he rejoices more over this recovery than he does for all the others that have not torn up his heart like this little lost one has. But on the other hand, Matthew’s gospel, chapter 26, portrays a shepherd who cannot even save his twelfth disciple. Judas Iscariot, no less than Matthew and Peter and James and John, followed Christ for a full three years. He beheld the same miracles they did, heard the same teaching they had, tasted the same Last Supper they took in. He was around for all three times Jesus raised a body from the dead—the daughter of Jairus, the son of the widow of Nain, and Lazarus. Judas absorbed into his senses all the same power and glory of the Son of God that the other 11 disciples had absorbed into theirs.

Think of it: Judas lived, ate, prayed, watched, and conversed with the Son of God—and walked away unimpressed. The Good Shepherd who leaves the 99 in search of the one is the same Good Shepherd who cannot save one among those closest to him. Can you feel that tension?

Yasuo Takamatsu met his wife, Yuko, in 1988, when Yuko was 25 and an employee at a bank. He says they fell in love right away. He describes her as gentle. He liked her smile, her modesty. She listened to classical music and painted watercolors on canvases that she showed to no one but him. There was real relationship there that connected deeply on a heart level.

And now, 2016, there is still a relationship there, but it’s like a photo negative. While once everything at their home reminded him of her presence, now everything around him reminds him of her absence. But he doesn’t give up. He knows of course that he won’t find her alive, but there is a relationship there, pulling his heart, pushing him to great lengths that other survivors have given up long ago. He keeps looking. It’s what love does.

Yasuo steps onto another pile of rocks, puts his hands on his knees, stares down into the ocean. His search is not for a needle in a haystack. He is looking for a person, for a name, for a soul. Unrepeatable, irreplaceable.

When the Prophet Isaiah wants to capture the truth of the human condition, he calls us sheep who have gone astray. “All we like sheep have gone astray. We have turned, every one of us, to our own way.” Did you catch that detail? “Every one of us.” Why did that other tragic event that involved water, the great flood, the tsunami to end all tsunamis, occur? Because, as Genesis records, “the wickedness of man was great in the earth; every intention of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually.”

Can you see the tear stains on the papyrus as the Prophet David laments in Psalm [14]:

God looks down from heaven on the children of man
to see if there are any who understand,
who seek after God.
They have all fallen away; together they have become corrupt.
There is none who does good; no, not even one.

All the sheep in the pen of the world have wandered away from the Shepherd: you, me, everyone. And any failure to accept that truth results in equal failure to grasp the wonder for the Shepherd who comes looking for us. Has your heart skipped a beat recently over that part of your salvation? There is never a moment where God is not looking for you, searching for more of you, for greater intimacy, for deeper relationship, seeking to cure you of the sinful condition that is battling for your soul.

A person can never fall in love with a god who demands his subjects come to him first. That’s the kind of power play a typical god is supposed to pull. But a person can fall in love with a God who, as St. Paul says, demonstrates his love toward us in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.

So how do we resolve the tension between the Good Shepherd who leaves the 99 in search of the one, and the Good Shepherd who cannot save one among those closest to him? Here is the key: a lost sheep has to want to be found. Judas did not want to be found, apparently, so he couldn’t be. Human free will is a force more terrifying than any tsunami. But a lost sheep that wants to be found will bleat until its throat bleeds. It will pray, it will call out, it will do good deeds. It will acknowledge its lostness, it will humble itself, it will confess. That’s how a lost sheep makes the noise that attracts the Good Shepherd. The Shepherd will search for the lost sheep, but the lost sheep has to want to be found.

Want your heart to stir freshly with love for God? Repeat after me, and say this with me: God alone knows what I have done. He alone knows what I am capable of, which makes his search for me that much more amazing.

A grieving man looks to the sea for some hope of closure, but his search will die with him. Our Lord Jesus Christ, the Good Shepherd, who comes with forgiveness of sins and new life, who shows compassion on the great and hungry throng of more than 5,000, receiving bread, fish, and nourishment, never tires. He only waits, turning a loving ear toward the wilderness, listening for a sound from the sheep who wants to be found, listening.