Deep Calls to Deep
by David Mercer
She looks like a prim, dignified grandmother—gray hair, glasses, sensible clothes, and a pleasant smile. She teaches Sunday school, coordinates the potlucks, and speaks at spiritual retreats, which is where I came to know her. To be honest, when she stood up to talk, I thought we’d hear a naïve, sweet, kind of preachy message, but I was wrong.
She began by talking of a man who had a drinking problem. He couldn’t keep a job, lost his family, and finally lost his home. For years now he has lived on the streets under overpasses, taking shelter in cardboard boxes and panhandling for change.
The man is her son.
You look at this woman and you just know she and her husband did a good job raising the boy—fed him, attended school activities, taught him a work ethic, took him to church. However, parents can do a good job and still have to watch their children fail.
Most of the words she said fade from my memory but I will always feel the pain and longing that she shared with us that day. I do remember what she said at the end of her talk: “If you happen to see a homeless, middle-aged man in ragged clothes walking the streets… please….” Her eyes filled and she stopped without finishing the sentence. She sat down amidst tearful silence.
Sometimes I think of this woman’s message late at night and I’ll get out of bed to check on my two children. I sit at their beds and put my hand on their chests to feel their breathing. Then I breathe my own prayer for their future, often saying just the one word: “Please….”?
Other parents have similar stories, and they breathe their own desperate prayers for their lost children to be delivered.
I think of Jesus’ parable of the father who stood out in the road hoping his wandering son would come home. Did he cry everyday and breathe the prayer: “Please….”?
Is it possible that God prays to himself for a wandering child to return safely? Or maybe he prays to us when we get ourselves lost and we don’t have the sense to come home. If we were still enough would we hear his breathing the word, “Please….”?
Love is a desperate thing. Our loved ones hurt themselves and we hate it because we love them. But because we love them, we often have no choice but to let them wander away from themselves.
Love is also a beautiful thing. In the parable the young man remembered the grace of his home and knew he could go back to the father who loved him. That story is an illustration showing how the sinner is able to turn around and go to the God who waits for him with love.
I hope the man on the street comes to himself one day and remembers that his mother still prays for him and waits.
Copyright © by David Mercer, July 28, 2005
WANDERING CHILDREN
We never stop worrying about them.
photo by David Mercer,
copyright © by David Mercer,
March 1, 2008, all rights reserved