Life 101

The calendar pages flip, the birthday candles add up, the grays multiply and gravity takes its toll. Life can wear a person out, but if you're smart, you learn a few things along the way.

Some things I've learned are fairly inconseqential, yet valuable. For instance, you're in the grocery store for a few things. You pick up one thing. Then another. You get to the back of the store and remember the ingredients for the cupcakes you're supposed to bake, or the 20 lb. box of detergent you need, whatever. You realize you REALLY should have grabbed a cart and sigh at the prospect of returning to the front of the store to get one. Then, lo and behold! A cart! Seemingly sent from heaven, empty and unattended, as if the angel Gabriel provided you ease of shopping. Listen up: DO NOT GET THAT CART! Do you hear me? That cart is from Satan and was abandoned for a reason! It will challenge your religion as well as your vow to clean up your language. It is worth the trip to the front of the store! Simply one thing I have learned on my journey.

Another thing just continues to bubble in front of me, and I can't let it go. I've heard it a minimum of a million six times. It's scripture so I would never have challenged it, but I just have seen it lived out too many times to ignore it:

"What do you think? If a man owns a hundred sheep, and one of them wanders
away, will he not leave the ninety-nine on the hills and go to look for the one
that wandered off? And if he finds it, I tell you the truth, he is happier about
that one sheep than about the ninety-nine that did not wander off. In the same
way your Father in heaven is not willing that any of these little ones should be
lost." Matthew 18:12-14

As Coffee Group travels telling our stories, I never fail to hear something new in our stories. But one thing I consistently think when Tammy tells her story of years of wandering, seeking peace and comfort in places other than God's arms, is how God wouldn't let her stay there. He sought her out, hunted her down, and wouldn't let her go. I thought the same thing reading "Same Kind of Different As Me". Both of the authors mention shallow (or non-existent) faith in their lives, but the story that unfolds is, to me, evidence that God wouldn't rest until they had returned.

The recent attention that Josh Hamilton has garnered is yet another illustration of that (you MUST click on that link -- AMAZING). Truly, I would yet to hear about him if not for Kelly, the cutest baseball fan I know, but his story so clearly illustrates God's tenacious seeking of His wandering children. And, just last night, I was having a phone conversation with my own brother, who had what I call "his prodigal years". We were talking about how heart-breaking it was for the rest of us in my family to see him like that. I mentioned that I believe with all of my heart (and I still do) that it was the fervent, pleading prayers of my mother that brought that child of God back into the fold. Even as I said it, though, I continued to think -- mom's prayers, and God's faithfulness to His children. God wouldn't let my brother go. He refused to surrender one of His children to the darkness. And, by my brother's own account -- it isn't like he was, at the time, very valuable to the Kingdom.

But, oh, the value of a rescued soul. The hearts they can touch. If for no other reason, than to proclaim, "If He wanted me, the way I was, then He probably wants you, too." God gives us the freedom to try, but you cannot sin beyond His love and forgiveness. Nor can you run far enough from His loving embrace. The story of the prodigal is so glorious. The moment the son could be seen returning to his Father's home, "But while he was still a long way off, his father saw him and was filled with compassion for him; he ran to his son, threw his arms around him and kissed him." (Luke 15:20)

Obviously, way better than learning how to avoid a rotten shopping cart, I am convinced that the Lord seeks out His children relentlessly. And when He sees them over the top of hill, He gathers His robes around His feet and runs to meet that child with loving arms. Glory.