With hundreds, and maybe thousands, I watched the news about a young man who disappeared. He was apparently depressed and obviously felt he was of no value to those around him so he left a note for his father and mother and quietly walked away.
Along with untold numbers of others, I glimpsed the agony of his parents and their plea for their son to let them know that he was alive and well. Their grief was heart-wrenching and I was probably not alone in offering a silent prayer on their behalf.
It is a story familiar to all of us and we feel utterly helpless to ease the pain or the anxiety of the waiting parents. In this case, they longed for news, they searched the streets for their son, they put out pictures of him and pleaded with anyone who may have seen him or knew where he was, to get in touch with them.
On this particular occasion, an immediate reward was offered to the one who could bring them news of their boy and I will confess that in my prayers for my own family that evening, was a sincere prayer for the boy and his desperate mother and father.
How different was the news a couple of days later. The boy had come home and the joy on his parent’s faces said it all. They could barely contain themselves and I am sure that those who saw the news were with me in sharing their happiness.
But it is a story that heaven lives through every day. God’s children choose another pathway that leads away from him and he grieves. All the thousands of angels in heaven grieve with him, as parents grieve when a child turns away from the pathway that leads home.
God’s pain is real because the pathway is marked out with a cross that took the life of his Son. He had to turn away and let his Son travel that way alone because it is the story of God’s love for us. ‘God commended his love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us,’ Romans 5:8.
It is on the only pathway home and our home coming will bring smiles to our Father’s face with an outbreak of angel-song because ‘joy shall be in heaven over one sinner that repenteth,’ Luke 15:7
Elizabeth Price