Power Verses……  “Love never fails..........And now abide faith, hope love, these three; but the greatest of these is love." (1 Corinthians 13:8 and 13)

 I read of a young, nameless girl who grew up on a cherry orchard on the outskirts of Traverse City, in the state of Michigan USA. Her story could be replicated in the lives of countless thousands of young people worldwide. Her parents, a bit old fashioned, tended to overreact to her nose ring, the music she enjoys, the length of her skirts, and the friends she hangs out with. They had grounded her a few times, and she's seething inside. “I hate you!” she screams at her father after yet another argument. So that night, she acts on a plan she has mentally rehearsed scores of time before, and runs away from home. Sounds familiar?

A few years earlier she had visited the city of Detriot with a church youth group. So she thought that because her local newspaper regularly reported in lurid detail about the gangs, the drugs, and the violence in downtown Detroit, this would be the last place her parents would look for her.

After only two days there she meets a man who drove the biggest car she’d ever seen. He offers her a ride, buys her lunch, and arranges a place for her to stay. He gives her a few pills that make her feel great. She decides she was right all along; her parents were keeping here from all this fun.

The good life continues for a month, two months, a year. The man with the big car, whom she calls “Boss”, teaches her a few things that men like. She’s under age, which adds to her “value”. She lives in a penthouse, and is given whatever she wants.  Occasionally she thinks about the folks back home, but their lives now seem so boring and provincial that she can hardly believe she grew up there.

After a year the first sallow signs of illness appear and it amazes her how quickly she’s discarded by the “Boss”. She finds herself out on the street, without a penny to her name, a commodity that had lost its value. When winter blows she finds herself sleeping when and where she can on the streets of Detroit, fearing the sound of footsteps, hungry and totally alone. She no longer feels like a woman of the world. Instead, she feels like a little lost girl, frightened, cold, and hungry, with empty pockets. She begins to whimper, as he pulls her legs tight underneath her and shivers beneath the cardboard on top of her old coat. In her semi-conscious state her mind is filled with a single image: springtime at home, when a million cherry trees bloom at once, with her golden retriever dashing through the rows and rows of blossomy trees chasing a tennis ball.

God, why did I leave she says to herself, and the pain stabs her heart. My dog back home eats better that I do now. She’s sobbing and she knows in an instant that more than anything else she wants to go home. She acts by making three nervous calls back home, resulting in three straight connections to the answering machine. The first two calls she hung up without leaving a message, but on the third one she says, “Dad, Mom, it’s me, I was wondering about maybe coming home. I’m catching a bus up your way, and I’ll be arriving around midnight tomorrow. If you are not there, well I guess I’ll just stay on the bus until it hits Canada.

The journey home by bus takes around seven hours, and during that time the questions fill her idle mind. What if her parents are out of town and miss the message? Should she have waited a day or two before returning home? Should she have at least spoken on the phone first? And even if they are home, they probably wrote her off as dead long ago. Panic, fear, rejection fills her mind.

The driver announces the next stop, Traverse City. The bus finally rolls into the station dead on the stroke of mid-night, and stops at the parking bay. The driver announces, “Fifteen minutes folks that all we have here.” Fifteen minute to decide her future life. She tidies herself up, and nervously walks into the terminal not knowing what to expect. Nothing could have prepared her mind for what she witnessed. There, in the typical cold, impersonal concrete-walls-and-plastic-chairs bus terminal stands a group of forty brothers and sisters and great-aunts and uncles and cousins and grandmother and even great-grandmothers. They are all wearing party hats, waving balloons, and taped across the entire wall of the terminal was a massive, colourful banner that read, “Welcome Home.”

Out of the crowd of well-wishers breaks her smiling excited parents. She stares out through the tears that quiver in her eyes and run down her cheeks like hot mercury and begins the memorized speech, “Mom and Dad, I’m sorry. I know……” Her father interrupts her. “Hush child. We’ve got no time for that. No time for apologies. You’ll be late for the party. A banquet’s awaiting you at home.”

If there was ever a story of reconciliation that confirmed the relevance of the person of Jesus Christ and his teaching it is the one you have just read. Two thousand years ago Jesus related the parable of The Prodigal Son (see Luke 15:11- 31). Down through the centuries that parable has been enacted thousands of time in diverse family circumstances, in hundreds of different languages amid varied ethnic lifestyles.

This week we move into that festive season called Christmas. In the true spirit of Christmas are there those within your family or circle of friends with whom you need to be reconciled with? Why not resolve to make that move, open your arms of love, throw a great party…..and of course, don’t forget the banquet. After all………

 

“Love came down at Christmas,

Love all lovely, Love divine;

Love was born at Christmas

Star and angel gave the sign.”

Do you feel convicted to know more about becoming a Christian? Click here.