“Come home safe,” were my words to my daughter this
morning as she left for her sophomore retreat.
As parents, isn’t that our biggest fear? That
something will happen to our children. And so it is with our Father in heaven.
What does that mean?
I know that I did not fathom God’s love for me
before I was a mother. I’d hear the words, “God loves you” and say yes as one of
those bobble head figures. Sure. God loves me. But those words didn’t take root, they
skimmed the surface.
Once I became a mother, I realized there was
nothing, NOTHING, that I wouldn’t do for my children. Nothing. Call it the
mother bear syndrome if you like, but at that moment of transfiguration from
woman to mother, everything in my being changed. I wanted to protect this new
life with my very life.
I know my husband had the very same feelings when each of our children were born. There was great joy and great responsibility. He will do anything for his children. ANYTHING.
So if I love my children with everything I have, how does that change the
saying, “God loves you?”
God is my Father. He said so. It started in the Old
Testament, when Abraham called God, “Father”, Abba. Jesus continued to proclaim
many times how much the Father in heaven loves us:
“Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or
reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you
not much more valuable than they?” –Matthew 6:26
“What do you
think? If a man owns a hundred sheep, and one of them wanders away, will he not
leave the ninety-nine on the hills and go to look for the one that wandered
off? And if he finds it, I tell you the truth, he is happier about that
one sheep than about the ninety-nine that did not wander off. In the same way
your Father in heaven is not willing that any of these little ones should be
lost.” –Matthew 18:12-14
Matthew
5:48 reveals Jesus saying, “Be perfect as your Father in heaven is perfect.” That
seems hard if not impossible. Perhaps we misinterpret the Father’s love?
There are many paths that we take in this life.
Wandering, sometimes lost, sometimes on the straight and narrow road. We take
detours, thinking there’s a shorter path to happiness. We make decisions we
later regret. In those moments of darkness and regret, it is when we must, “Be Still and Know that I am God.” -Psalm 46:10
It is then we need to interpret Matthew 5:48 as Jesus saying, “Come home safe.”
What gets us Home? Trying to do the right thing. To
live in the promise that God knows what’s best for us. In that hope we learn to
trust Him.
Revelations 14:4 says that those reach heaven, “follow
the Lamb where ever he goes.”
That is perfection. To follow Jesus always and in
everything.
As humans we will stumble, perfection escapes us.
But it is the fact that we get up and try again, that’s where perfection comes
in. That road leads us Home safe.
I don’t often use song here on my blog, but I love this
song by The Fray, Be Still.
Take a moment and listen and know the “I AM.”
God wants you home safe.
