{the lost sheep}

I am reading a book right now by Bruce C. Hafen called, The Broken Heart. It is SO good! I highly recommend it for everyone. I love his insights into the lost sheep, as referred to in Matthew 18:12: If a man hath an hundred sheep, doth he not leave the ninety and nine, and goeth into the mountains, and seeketh that which is gone astray? 

Many think of the lost sheep as primarily someone who is straying from the restored gospel of Jesus Christ.  Elder Hafen, however, offers some additional application of this as he states, "The lost sheep are not just the people who don't come to church. The lost sheep is a mother who goes down in the valley of the dark shadows to bring forth children. The lost sheep is a young person, far away from home and faced with loneliness and temptation. The lost sheep is a person who has just lost a critically needed job; a business person in financial distress; a new missionary in a foreign culture; a man just called to be a bishop; a married couple who are misunderstanding each other; a grandmother whose children are forgetting her. I am the lost sheep. You are the lost sheep. "All we like sheep have gone astray" (Isaiah 53:6). The times of feeling lost are not always times when we have wandered from the straight and narrow path. Not at all. We may be precisely where the Lord would have us be."

This life was meant for us to have times of trouble so that we might, with our broken hearts, turn to the Lord and become more of what He wants us to be---and He will make us whole.