Looking for God in All the Wrong Places
An Advent reading of sheep, goats, and the uncomfortable truth beneath them
Advent is a season of waiting, but not the passive kind.
It asks us where we are looking for God while we wait.
As the world prepares for Christmas with lights, lists, and longings, Jesus tells a story that quietly unsettles our assumptions. It’s a parable not about distant heaven, but about God’s surprising closeness. Not about who is “in” or “out,” but about where God has chosen to stand.
There’s a famous parable that Jesus told, which still unsettles people today.
He describes a final scene of judgment where all humanity is gathered before God. The people are separated into two groups, like a shepherd separating sheep from goats.
This image made immediate sense in the world Jesus lived in. Shepherds often grazed sheep and goats together during the day but separated them at night, as sheep were hardier in the cold and goats required more shelter. It was everyday, practical imagery.
But the story itself was anything but ordinary.
The “sheep,” Jesus says, are those who fed the hungry, welcomed the stranger, clothed the poor, visited the sick, and cared for those in prison. The “goats” are those who didn’t.
Then comes the twist: Jesus identifies himself with the ones who were hungry, thirsty, sick, or in prison. “Whatever you did for the least of these, you did for me.”
At first glance, this parable sounds terrifying, like a cosmic sorting machine in which some go to heaven, others to hell, and that is how some interpret it. However, that’s a surface-level reading. Something deeper is going on here.
The Problem Beneath the Problem
The people Jesus was speaking to carried a particular worldview. They believed they were God’s chosen ones, destined to rule the world when God finally set everything right. They expected liberation, justice, and peace … very soon.
But here’s the problem: in believing they were chosen, they ignored the suffering around them. They were waiting for God to put the world right, yet overlooked the cries of the poor, the sick, and the marginalised right in front of them.
That’s the sting in this parable. It’s not about heaven and hell, at least not in the way we often imagine. It’s a challenge to those who close their eyes to suffering while assuming God is safely on their side.
God at the Edges
When you trace Jesus’s story through the gospels, one thing becomes strikingly clear: God appears in broken places.
Think about your own life. Have you ever hit a low point and, strangely, found an unexpected sense of presence or hope there? Have you ever walked alongside someone in their despair, only to discover a moment of grace you couldn’t have predicted?
That’s where God is found, not in lofty ideals or distant promises, but right in the middle of human need.
Why We Avoid It
It’s easier to push passages like this off into another world. To imagine it’s about a future judgement, or someone else’s problem. Why? Because looking directly at the suffering around us can feel unbearable. If we really let it in, it could break us.
Yet, that’s exactly where Jesus insists he is to be found: among the hungry, the lonely, the sick, the forgotten. If you want to find him, don’t look up to the clouds. Look to the streets, the hospitals, the care homes, the places we’d rather not go.
The Challenge for Us
The parable then becomes less about a sorting hat for eternity and more about a question for the present:
Are we willing to go where Jesus is?
Will we stay distant, safe, and comfortable, hoping God is on our side, while never really drawing close to those who need us most?
If we avoid those places, we risk missing him altogether.
God isn’t waiting to be found in some far-off heaven. He’s here, in the grit of the everyday, in the cries of the world’s pain.
If you want to find him, that’s where to look.
Advent reminds us that God does not arrive where we expect.
Not in comfort, certainty, or power, but in vulnerability.
The child in the manger grows into a man who insists that God is found among the hungry, the sick, the forgotten, and the overlooked. Waiting for God, it turns out, is not about standing still and looking upwards. It is about learning to look around.
As Advent continues, the question lingers gently but firmly:
Are we willing to go where God already is?
That might just be where Christmas truly begins.
Thank you for reading this Sunday reflection. I really appreciate it. Since retiring early, I have been writing articles online for various publications, but have decided to bring them all under one central location, here at Sacred and Secular.
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Paul
Spot on. This really resonate with your thoughts from a while back on what practical faith looks like. Does this emfasys on empathy and action still get lost so often in modern interpretations of spirituality?