Porch lights burn, flyers seek, answering machine messages reach out and prayers plead...please come home, as parents wait desperate for their children to see that their choices have led them away from home, away from love, away from safety and away from God.

They ache with the pain only a parent can feel at the reality of a child that has chosen a life controlled by the sins of the world. They search their minds for answers of where teaching, training and guiding went wrong. They question what course of discipline or correction may have set their child on this self-destructive path. They search their hearts for reassurance that their love was evident.

They wonder why their child can’t see the love that gave them life. They ask themselves how this worldliness could so quickly consume a child that had once stood so innocent and pure before them anxious to please. They ask why their child has chosen to abandon faith, safety, love, the peace that comes from the knowledge of God, our Creator, and the gift of salvation through Jesus Christ.

They weep as they realize their child has chosen the immorality of the world over them. They grieve at the thought of their child choosing to revel in the sin that exchanges the precious, beautiful and wonderful gift of eternal life for the ugly, torturous and eternal anguish of separation from God.

In all the truth of their pain, they gain only a glimpse of what God endures every day.

God, our Father, daily endures the immeasurable agony of His children choosing to turn away from His love, all He has given, all He has taught, and all He wants to so richly bless them with to revel in the short-sighted, stubborn and selfish desires of sin. He grieves deeply as to how His children could so easily discard Him for sin.

Israel and Judah exchanged God for idols, sin and unrighteousness, but His message was one of coming home, returning to Him and restoring a relationship with Him.

Today, He waits, desperate for His child to hear His message, realize the depth of His seeking and to hear His pleading...please come home. He left the light of the cross on for you...please come home.