I have 3 kids who are all grown.....well the youngest will be 18 in a few weeks and graduate, so technically, he's not totally grown, but close encough. When my now 21 year old son was 3, my family and I went to a big yard sale. It was held in a park and had lots of venders. My husband had to work that day, but my parents were along. We were walking along and the kids were hanging on the stroller as the littlest guy was just a baby. I look an my 3 year old is missing. This place was a big open area. Right away, my "mom panic mode" set in and I began screaming for him. When he didn't come to me I panicked even more. That "mom panic mode" clouds your mind, judgement, and thoughts. My dad was trying to calm me down telling me everyone was looking at me.....which I didn't care, my kid was gone. My mom went to look for him. I kept crying and thinking that I lost my sweet boy and how would I tell my husband that his son was gone? All I could think was that I'd never see my boy again (yet I bet it wasn't even 5 minutes he was missing).
All of a sudden, my mom comes back to me holding his hand. He had spotted a tool bench for sale at someone's stand and felt he needed to go check it out. When my boy saw how upset I was after I ran to hug him and pick him up, he began to cry too. It was an emotional time of reuniting to my child.....who I thought was lost forever. I was never so scared in all my life.
Last night at a meeting we talked of the lost son in Luke 15. This is quite a different story, but has the same ending. The son that was lost (literally and spiritually) was found. The father ran to meet his boy in the street when he spotted him. He hugged him and they had a reuniting that was emotional also. The father in this parable is God, and I'm not a father or God, but the time of finding my boy that day was full of emotion and we rejoiced that he was found.
This story tells us that heaven rejoices at one sinner (those who don't know Jesus) who comes to repentance. It also tells us that the Father will seek his children and rejoice when they come back home to Him. We are all like the lost boy in the story. Until we are repentant of our sins toward our Father, he will wait. When we choose Jesus and believe He died to save us, we can be free and our Father will be right there to meet us and rejoice when we are found, just like my little guy that summer day.
