Imagine with me this scene. You are lost in the woods, disoriented because it all looks the same, you can’t find your trail map. What do you do? Most of us will begin to feel some level of panic, some will begin to run in different directions trying to find the way back, maybe the more experienced hiker will read the stars and moss on the tree. For most of us, our fear and panic will force us to sit down and wait, to hope that someone will know we are lost and call the rangers. Our life of faith is the same. Like the lost sheep, we run from one thing to another trying to find peace, hope, joy and find that whatever it is will works for a little while and then stop, so we eventually run to something else. God will continue to search us out, even if we don’t want to be found. Eventually, we run out of options and sit down, and God is right there waiting to pick us up, heal us and bring us home. What greater happiness can there be! Our God is a patient God. He will wait for us even though His heart is longing for us to be home with him. Like the father in the third parable, God waits for us to come home and will embrace us no matter what we may have done or the choices we have made. The younger son and the older son both treated the father with great disrespect. By demanding his inheritance, the younger son treated his father as if he was dead. The older son yells at him and treats him like he is a servant. Unfortunately, we treat God the same way. He looks for us, he loves us, he is always there for us, and we treat him as if he is dead, only turning to him when we need something. Like the older brother, we demand an answer to a prayer that we want exactly the way we want it, then we get angry with him when we don’t get our way. We stamp our feet like little children. We walk away from him when he expects us to actually live the Gospel message. However, the father of the parable, God sits and waits with a longing and loving heart. He searches for us like a shepherd looking for a lost sheep. He rejoices like the woman who has found the coin. So, my brothers and sisters, we can try to find our own way and rely only on our selves or we can sit down and allow ourselves to be found. God is looking for you and me: will you let him find you? God is sitting looking down the road and awaiting your return: Isn’t it time to come home? We are all the lost sheep, we are all the coin that was lost, and we are both brothers. And yet, God loves us all.
Project H2O
Imagine what your life would be like if you awoke tomorrow morning and found that there was no water coming into your home. What would you do? Probably you'd get a few gallons of bottled water, and feel a bit grungy and inconvenienced until the water came back on. Other than that, things would really be OK. But what if the water never came back on? And what if the stores ran out of bottled water? What if the nearest drainage ditch became the only place we could get any water at all? … Help The Thirsty
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