In the words of Stan Lee: "Hello True Believers!"
Happy St. David's Day!
It has been a few days since I have posted, and I'm sure my two or three readers have been pondering what I have been up to lately. Well, the suspense is over :)
This past weekend was week two of our marriage enrichment class at church. It was very interesting to hear from Tim, who is a marriage counselor on the subject, even for a cagey veteran like me :)
What I really want to touch on today, though, is not from this past weekend, but from the week before. Christina and I had been doing a lot of wedding legwork (literally....I think we visited over 10 stores that day). Since we were doing many wedding things that weekend, Ellie stayed with her grandparents. By the time I got over there early Tuesday morning, I was really anxious to see her. The nice thing is she was as excited to see me as I was her. She gave me a big "huggy" and "kissy". It was awesome! As I was taking her to day care, we talked about what her and her Grandparents had done over the weekend and what her and I were going to do the rest of the week together. We got to day care, I hugged and kissed her goodbye, and then headed into work.
As I drove away I got to thinking about two important questions: 1.) Just as I was excited to see my child when she was away from me for a while, is God equally excited to see His child(ren) when they come racing back to Him? 2.) For as excited as Ellie was to see me that morning, why are we not always as excited to run to our Heavenly Father?
The answer to the first question was pretty easy for me to answer. I can remember many times, as I grew up in the church and even after I was saved (and older), reading the story of the Prodigal Son and hearing messages preached on it. In case you are not familiar, this story was a parable that Jesus told to His disciples. He tells of a son who asked his father for his inheritance and then left his father to go blow the fortune on fine wine, women, Moon Pies, and penny whistles. A long parable short, he ended up trying to get food from some pigs, knee deep in mud, wishing he was back with his daddy. He figured that if he was even a hired hand for this father, he would be living with more that he had at that point. So he headed down the road to his father's hacienda, rehearsing the message he was going to tell his dad. When his dad saw him coming, he ran to him and embraced him. He had his hired help (there were a lot of "h"'s right there) get a cloak and a ring and to make a feast for his son, because he came back home.
In this parable, Jesus was describing our relationship with God the Father. We were (or "are" if you haven't been saved) spiritually wanting to eat what the pigs had because our hearts were desolate. If you have ever watched a zombie movie, you know that a zombie is a dead body that walks around. Spiritually, that is what we were: zombies wanting to eat pig slop. God is the role of the father in this story and when He sees us coming back with a contrite heart wanting to be even the least of the people in His kingdom, He runs to us. Please don't miss the emphasis on Him running. He doesn't wait for us to get to a certain place ("Hey look...here comes Sally back to be saved. Hmmm....I think I will wait until after lunch until I go see her"). Our God runs to meet us right were we are! It makes me ponder this question: if the Prodigal son had been feeding the pigs and the Father just happened to be visiting that city and saw his son out there trying to grab a bite from the bovine buffet (yes, I know a bovine is a cow and not a pig.....if I said a pork buffet I would have just gotten hungrier), would the father had said, "yeah.......I'm betting he'll be crawling back soon." and walked away, or would he have done the high jump over the fence and into the swine swill to hug his son? I'm sure it would have been the latter scene.
But what about the second question? Why are we not as quick to run to our Heavenly Father? Why do we have to wait until we are trying to lick morsels from a mud-infested slop trough before we come to the conclusion that we are in need of what only God can provide for us? I can't tell you how many time since I have gotten saved that I try to do something (even something small and seemingly insignificant) on my own and don't first run to my Creator. I'll give you an example: last night I was tired. Which is to say that I could have probably slept for three straight days if my daughter hadn't woken me wanting a drink of water. When I woke up, I looked for my cell phone and couldn't find it. I had it with me in bed that night because I was waiting for my fiancee to call me (turns out she did, but I didn't hear my cell phone ring). To make matters worse, the battery had completely died, so calling it was not going to bear any fruit. So I scourge my bed and room looking for my cell phone. I still can't find it. Then I think that maybe Ellie had picked it up. I asked her, but she didn't have it. I looked and looked and looked again, hoping that it would magically appear in the spots that I had just checked over about 15 times, but alas, it was not to be found.
So, I call Christina. I apologize for not hearing her call (I correctly assumed she called and correctly assumed that I missed it) and told her I couldn't find my phone. We talked for a moment and then she prayed for me. She said in her prayer the she knew God saw where my phone was and asked Him to reveal it to me. We finished praying and hung up. I finished getting Ellie ready and went into my kitchen to get an item. Lo and behold, what do you think was sitting on my counter? Yep, my phone. I don't know how it made it to the kitchen, but there it lay. I thanked God for helping me, and then thought "Why don't I do that all of the time?"
Now, don't get me wrong: praying like that isn't a magic spell. Asking God to reveal it won't make Him do it. That is not the point. The point is, even if God chose not to reveal my phone to me at that moment, we had asked Him to. We came to Him in a relational manner and with open hearts and told Him about it. That is what I need more of. That is what I want more of.
Off to do some work. Thanks for reading to the bottom. Daily bread, phone GPS, and daily strength.
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