As I think about, it can be pretty easy to get off track. Pretty easy to get distracted . . . to lose focus . . . to grow lax in maintaining good habits . . . to be careless in allowing less than best new habits to form. Not talking about the “big sins” . . . though could be . . . but stuff that I might consider minor . . . not even stuff that is in and of itself bad, just not the best. The hymn phrased it this way, “prone to wander, Lord I feel it.” And so often in those times, the remedy rests in coming to my senses and turning things around . . . getting myself back on track . . . doing what I need to do to be where I need to be. But sometimes that can be so hard . . . so check this out . . .

I have gone astray like a lost sheep; seek Your servant, for I do not forget Your commandments.    (Psalm 119:176 ESV)

The NLT puts it like this, “I have wandered away like a sheep, come and find me . . . ”

So often . . . maybe most often . . . the response to realizing you’re not where you should be is to “buck up” and “get right with God.” But here the psalmist knowing his less than ideal state . . . knowing that he’s off the path . . . knowing that’s he’s not where he should be . . . instead cries out, “Come and find me!”

And what grabs me this morning is how appropriate a response this is . . .

“Seek your servant,” says the psalmist. Indicates something about how the songwriter viewed himself . . . a bond servant. Indicates, as well, how he viewed the Master. Oh, for a servant to believe that his master’s care for him was such that he could call upon him for help . . . that he could confidently ask him to come alongside . . . that he could trust that the master’s heart was such that it delighted in hearing his name entreated . . . that there would be a founded expectation that the master would heed the call to “come and find me.”

How great a prayer is this for sheep to pray? For we have a Shepherd who seeks lost sheep . . .

He is the Good Shepherd who lays down His life for the sheep (John 10:11) . . . He is the Great Shepherd of the sheep by the blood of eternal covenant (Heb. 13:20) . . . He is the Chief Shepherd who will one day appear distributing crowns of unfading glory (1Peter 5:4) . . . He is the Shepherd and Overseer of our souls (1Peter 2:25) . . . and, if I’m getting what this verse is saying, He is the Shepherd who says, “Call to me when you’re distant and disoriented, and I will come find you.”

What a blessed reminder that it’s not just about my ability to stay on track . . . or my discipline in returning when I know I’ve taken a detour . . . but that it’s so about a Shepherd who knows His own . . . and is known by His own . . . and will seek anew, and draw to Himself again, those who ask of Him, “Come and find me.”

O to grace how great a debtor
  daily I’m constrained to be!
  Let Thy goodness, like a fetter,
  bind my wandering heart to Thee.

     — Come Thou Fount of Every Blessing, Robert Robinson, 1735-90