Someone Is Looking For You!

In 1975, when I graduated from college, I traveled for 15 months with a Christian musical ministry team with Lutheran Youth Encounter. This organization sent hundreds of college-aged kids around the world to share their faith. Our team, New Vision, traveled to and ministered in churches in New Zealand and Papua New Guinea, singing and sharing the good news of Jesus.

One of the songs we loved to sing a cappella was a little ditty that went around and around until it finally ended.

“I shall arise and go unto my father,

and say unto him father, I have sinned against heaven and before you.

and no more worthy to be called thy son.”

And when the father saw his son afar off,

He arose to greet him, kissed and embraced him with love and compassion

saying, “Once my son was lost, but now my son is found!”

This little round tells just a part of the amazing story of a father seeing his son and running to welcome him home.

Whenever I read this story (Luke 15:11-32), I wonder what the father was doing before the day his son returned.

I can imagine that every day, he went to the window to see if, by chance, this was the day he would find his son walking up the road…coming home.

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Recently, I was in a group where we were asked, “What is the good news for you?”

A picture immediately popped into my head. After church, a friend told me she had looked for me last week but must have missed me. It was a simple statement, but somehow, it touched my heart. She had looked for me.

That felt like it was the good news.

Another person in the group shared that the good news felt like home to him. “It is a place where I belong, a place where I am someone’s brother.”

We summed up that the good news is when we are shown to be valuable by being looked for and invited home, not by what we know or what we do, but simply because we are loved.

As I pondered these two answers, a surprising discovery came to me.

Remember that short little ditty we sang?

You recognize the story. The son runs off, squandering his inheritance and hitting rock bottom. That hit reminded him that he had a home that he could return to. He might not be received as a son, but at least he could be a servant with food to eat and a place to live.

So he returns home and finds that his father has been watching for him! Looking and looking, hoping for the day his son would return. And the minute he sees that familiar form walking up the road, he runs to greet him, kisses and embraces him!

He welcomes him home, saying I’ve been looking for you! This is your home, the place where you are loved and where you are my son and brother. Let’s throw a party!

The good news.

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What popped into our heads that Monday afternoon was the good news!

Someone is looking for us - and inviting us to come home.

Jesus told this story of the prodigal son to show us that our Father God is looking for us.

John 15:16 says, You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you so that you might go and bear fruit.

You and I were chosen to come home. We just had to say yes and turn in that direction.

Our worship pastor always says that God is constantly trying to break through to us.

In this discussion, I felt like he broke through to me.

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You and I feel the need to belong, to be known and wanted…and that is just what God wants for us too!

He keeps his eyes on us and longs for us to come home - to the place we belong, to the place where we are loved, forgiven, and welcomed.

Henri Nouwen writes in The Return of the Prodigal Son,

Here is the God I want to believe in:

a Father who, from the beginning of creation, has stretched out his arms in merciful blessing,

never forcing himself on anyone, but always waiting; never letting his arms drop down in despair,

but always hoping that his children will return so that he can speak words of love to them

and let his tired arms rest on their shoulders.

His only desire is to bless.

I feel like this is the reason God wants us in a local church. We have a place where we can come and find the Father greeting and welcoming us home. He, through his people and worship, offers delight that we have shown up. We also find the Father working through us to welcome others in the same way.

The good news is that Jesus, who lived, did amazing things, was rejected, suffered and died, rose to life again, and lives to intercede for us so that we can love him back, along with our neighbor.

The Holy Spirit lives within us and enables us to respond to that love, the love that keeps looking for us…until we are ready to come home, to say yes to all he has done to provide a place for us and to start the work of growing us up into a deeper faith and service.

So on the stressful, chaotic, fearful, crazy days, we can know that our Father is looking for us, and we can run to him.

Nouwen continues in The Return of the Prodigal Son,

His love cannot force, constrain, push, or pull.

It offers the freedom to reject that love or to love in return.

It is precisely the immensity of the divine love that is the source of the divine suffering.

God, creator of heaven and earth, has chosen to be, first and foremost, a Father.

He is the Father who is looking for us. He is the One who wants us to return home, where we belong, where we are the big brother or the little sister.

Known. Wanted. Loved.

That is the good news. Such good news.

REMBRANDT VAN RIJN (1606-69) The Return of the Prodigal Son