Thought for the Day - The Father who welcomes us home when we're in need
Our Father which art in heaven, Hallowed be thy name... (Matthew 6:9–13).
Do you know the feeling of being lost? Do you remember a time when you were small and wandered off in a crowd, or just misplaced your parent? writes Rev Jon Bergen.
Maybe you have been on the other end of that and lost track of your wee one and had to shout or go looking for them.
The interesting thing is that children know their parents and parents know their children.
When the lost condition ends, there is recognition that assures us that we know each other.
There is the story of the lost sheep, the lost coin and finally the lost son in Luke 15. The story is long, so I’ll use the super short version.
A younger son demands his inheritance while his father is still living, he leaves home to a far country and wastes all the money he’d received.
Broke, he ends up starving and feeding pigs, so he decides to go home to his father and beg for a place as a servant.
His father sees him from a long way off and runs to greet the son, restores him with a robe, a ring and shoes.
Then the party starts with the feast and declaration that “My son was dead, and is alive, he was lost and is found.”
The point is that the father was waiting, the father was forgiving and the father rejoiced.
As we consider the words “Our Father” as we pray, it is indeed good to know that God loves us and is willing to forgive us, to restore us and that there is rejoicing when we come back to Him.
God offers us the robe, the ring and the shoes.
The robe on the boy who had been farming pigs was the covering of the father, the ring was a picture of the authority of the father being restored to the son and the shoes covered the dirty feet of the traveller and showed that the son was once again in the family.
My prayer this week is that we can know we have a father that will look out for us, and welcome us home even after we ignore him and leave him far behind, to welcome us back to the family we all need.
The Father knows us, do we know Him?
Rev Jon Bergen is the former pastor of Brechin Baptist Church and is currently pastor of the Seeley Lake Baptist Church in Montana, USA.