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So here we are, you and I, together in this wilderness.  For our purposes now, let’s call that wilderness “life.”  In our sinfulness, in our life here, we are separated from God.  We are lost.  In that setting, hear the words from the Lectionary reading from Ephesians, chapter 2, verses 1-6:

It wasn't so long ago that you were mired in that old stagnant life of sin. You let the world, which doesn't know the first thing about living, tell you how to live. You filled your lungs with polluted unbelief, and then exhaled disobedience. We all did it, all of us doing what we felt like doing, when we felt like doing it, all of us in the same boat. It's a wonder God didn't lose his temper and do away with the whole lot of us. Instead, immense in mercy and with an incredible love, he embraced us. He took our sin-dead lives and made us alive in Christ. He did all this on his own, with no help from us! Then he picked us up and set us down in highest heaven in company with Jesus, our Messiah.

 In our wilderness – in our sin – God sent his son to save us.  To find the lost, the broken, the one in the desert of loneliness, the one in the prison of hatred, the one in the pain of illness, the one in the terrible condition of sin – to find you and me, and to redeem us.  To bring us home.

You are not alone.  You have been saved by the God who created you from imagination and breathed life into you.  You have been saved by the love of a God whose very nature would not allow him to leave you alone in the wilderness.  You have been brought home from exile.  Sing about it.