Good morning. I recall reading once about a woman searching for her brother. Many years earlier, when she was in her teens, her older brother left home never to return. He had been quiet, shy even, but not to the point that anyone worried about him. Then one day he didn’t come home. She loved him, and it hurt her to think that he would leave the way he did. When the days turned into weeks, and then months, she decided to search for him. She devoted time and resources, determined to find the brother she had lost.
The years went by, and the woman married and had children. But her thoughts about her lost brother never left her and she continued to search the internet, hoping that somehow, some day, she would find a reference about her brother.
Meanwhile, her brother had had some kind of a mental breakdown. Eventually, he ended up hundreds of miles away, living as a homeless person in an abandoned shed, spending his days walking along the roadways picking up trash. Apparently, he ate what he could find and filled the abandoned shed with some of the things he found along the roads.
Many years had gone by, and people became used to seeing the odd homeless man, always alone, walking on the side of the road with a trash bag. Or, if they lived in the area, they might see him huddled in his own little world in that old shed. He didn’t bother anyone, and no-one bothered him.
But one day a car had to stop, because the man everyone recognized but no-one actually knew was doubled over in pain. The doctors found that he was very ill, and the hospital chaplain took on the task of searching for the man’s family.
Eventually, the chaplain contacted the sister, and the sister and her husband didn’t hesitate to travel the long distance to reunite with her brother. But her brother didn’t know her. Not only that, he wanted nothing to do with her. She offered to take him home and to care for him. But he refused. All he wanted was to go back to his shed and to do his “job” which is how he thought of picking up the trash along the roads.
Can you imagine the pain in this woman’s heart? After searching for years for the brother she loved, and lost, she finally had found him. What could have been the happiest of endings became an even more painful event as she had to accept that finding him was one thing but having him return her love was something far different.
Consider the woman’s story of her lost brother when you consider Jesus’ parable of the lost sheep in Luke 15:3-7 Then Jesus told them this parable: “Suppose one of you has a hundred sheep and loses one of them. Doesn’t he leave the ninety-nine in the open country and go after the lost sheep until he finds it? And when he finds it, he joyfully puts it on his shoulders and goes home. Then he calls his friends and neighbors together and says, ‘Rejoice with me; I have found my lost sheep.’ I tell you that in the same way there will be more rejoicing in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine righteous persons who do not need to repent.
God doesn’t give up on those whom He loves. And the thing is, He loves all of us, no matter what we have done or what we have become. When we are lost, He searches for us. When He finds us, He carries us home on His shoulders and has a party to celebrate!
By the way, the woman who had lost her brother didn’t give up either. She traveled back to see him whenever she could, bringing with her what she remembered to be his favorite foods. In time, he began to look forward to seeing her, and a level of trust began to form. It took another year but eventually he came home with her. I imagine that there would have been many challenges in blending him into her family, but love finds a way.
Don’t give up on the lost one that you love. God never will!
Vern