What is it that God wants most?  What are His most priceless treasures?  What does God love above all else?  You and me.  The ‘cherished missing.’
    What He wants most is for His lost children to be found.  What He loves above all else are those for whom He gave His son.  His most treasured possessions are you and me … and people like the priest I saw in India a couple of years ago.
   
I was in the lobby of the hotel, waiting for a ride to the Andheri church where I was to preach.  Busy at the statue of “sai baba” (an infamous god in Mumbai) was some kind of priest. He was not a typical priest in that he was dressed very plainly, without shoes or socks.  As I watched, he continued to put more flowers on the idol.  He sprinkled drops of water on the flowers, ceremoniously sipped some water from his hand, and then touched some of the water to his head.  Then he took several sticks of incense, lighted them, and smoothly guided the smoke-aroma all around the idol.  Finally, with one last act of devotion, I could see him urgently whispering words to the stone image, and then he placed his forehead on the god’s foot.  The smoke still lingered around the idol as I walked away, as my ride had come.
    How well he represents the spiritual condition of many in the world; even in our own neighborhoods.  So desperate to believe in something that will care; someone to love them and intervene in their lives.
   
On the way to the church we stopped at a traffic signal, I looked to the left and then to the right, and saw a filthy, gaunt-tangled human form with a crazed look on his face.  He was sitting on a rock, and all of the sudden, his eyes connected with mine.  Just then I wondered if the spirit that had influenced him could somehow sense the Spirit of the One within me. I went by that place a half dozen times and he was there on that rock –all day and all night –hair and nails long; ragged, tattered clothes hanging from his body of skin and bones. One time I went by with one of our national pastors.  “Look at their life,” he said to me with emotion. Though he sees this every day, he has not grown calloused to the poverty and human degradation.  I could sense the pain he feels for them in his voice.
    Some of the Father’s most treasured positions, cast aside and forgotten, into the waste basket because some believe that they are not really needed.
    But the Father says:  “Those are my children; the ones I really like.  I thought you might like to love them too.  You didn’t lose site of them, did you?”
    By God’s grace and with His help, I never want to over look anyone… especially the ‘least of these.’