SUNDAY SERVICES:

“Will you help me find my mommy?”  It was a small shaky voice, from a 5ish-year-old named Tommy, that I heard that gorgeous spring morning. 

I had settled into what had seemed to be a deserted pool area at the hotel, found a lounge chair and table, and posited a pile of books.  It was Lent and I was on a quest, wanting to see again and anew the enormity of God’s love manifest on the Friday we call Good. 

Our son, Peter, had a work conference in Gainesville and his roommate had canceled. So, at his invitation, I gladly filled in as roommate, having nothing but leisure time to spend for two whole days.  

The Seven Words I Heard

Leisure for me was a great opportunity to once again hang with him and to dive into Jesus' seven last words, and they weren’t the seven words of my newfound friend’s question, “Will you help me find my mommy?”  

“Sure I’ll help you find your mom,” I said. 

Scanning the pool, and seeing no signs of life, I said, “Let’s try this. Here’s a towel and take this chair next to mine.  I’ll bet she will show up here in just a minute or two.  I’m certain that she wants to find you even more than you want to find her.” 

And sure enough, barely before our names had left our lips and landed on our ears, there was mom.

The Love God Has for Us

Of course, I thought of the Parable of the Prodigal.  The father was more anxious for the son to come home than the son was to go home. 

Jesus was trying to tell us how great God’s love is for each of us.  Sometimes it blows by us, other times it blows us away.

In the introduction to a book of A.W. Tozer’s collected sermons from the Gospel of John on the love of God, entitled No Greater Love,  James L. Snyder writes, “One phrase Tozer uses that is so powerful is “I am the most important person in God’s eyes…God sees the individual and treats them as though they were the only one in the world.” 

He adds, “I do not think many people really appreciate the love God has for us, and we take for granted what it really means.”  So true.

A Vision of Jesus

Jack Murphy experienced it.  Jack was Barb’s sister Lil’s husband and he was dying; dementia was doing its work. 

In his last days, he said numerous times he wanted to go home.  Was that their place in Wyomissing, PA? 

Could be, but he had a vision and in a very lucid moment shared it with Lil.  

He said that he and members of his family were all together at one of their favorite places, the Pretzel Factory.  And then he added, “Jesus was there too. And he was fun, full of joy, and quite fit.” 

Jack was a lapsed Catholic, and wasn’t a ‘Jesus freak,’ so the words were, well, different, real. 

Was it for real?  What if it was for real? 

Jack wanted to go home, and maybe our God wants that more than we do and comes looking for us just like Tommy’s mom.  She knew just where to find him.

What If...?

What if there is a spiritual realm coexisting right now, and sometimes we participate in it like Jack did? 

What if the Kingdom of Heaven has really come among us - just as Jesus said it has? 

Have you heard the reports of a five-year-old boy surviving 192 hours, 8 days, in rubble from the earthquakes in Turkey?  When asked how he survived, he said a man dressed in white came daily and gave me water and food.  For real?

Where Is Home?

A good friend to Barbara and me, Brennan Manning, loved to say, and said it often, “We’ve checked into the hotel earth overnight on our way to the heavenly Jerusalem.  Earth is not our home.”  So where is our home?

What if our real home is our first home, the Garden of Eden?  

Home was where we walked with God.  There was no dying or crying.  Joy was the constant forecast and freedom blew in every breeze, as we walked with our God.

As someone put it, “We’re all just walking each other home.” 

What if, what if the Father is more excited about us coming home than we are about going home? 

What if God was even more excited about welcoming Jack to his true home than Jack was about going home? 

Extravagant Love

Our Father’s love is uncontainable, unconditional, in the morning sun and evening rain it’s simply extravagant!

And ultimately, Jesus says that there is no greater love than to lay down your life for another - and that’s just what Jesus does, isn’t it? 

Jesus dies to give us life, abundant and eternal.  He puts death to death for you and me. 

Yes, God loves us beyond reason or even imagination - “as we are and not as we should be,” another Brennan quote. 

Be loved.

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