April 30th, 2025
The Upward Look, by Jon Forrest
Stop Moving!
Mary Brumbaugh’s husband, an airline pilot, often has difficulty locating items around the house. One day he asked Mary where the salt was. Annoyed, she responded, "How on earth can you find Detroit at night in a blizzard, but you can’t find the salt in your own kitchen?"
"Well, darling," he replied, "they don’t move Detroit!”
Jesus parables of the lost sheep, the lost coin, and the lost son in Luke 15 tell how God is on a search and recovery mission! When we talk about people as being lost we are not talking about people who need to find Jesus. They are people Jesus is seeking to find.
I remember the character, “Lieutenant Dan” played by Gary Sinise in the movie “Forrest Gump.” I recall the Lieutenant mockingly asking Forrest (played by Tom Hanks) if he had found Jesus yet. To which Forrest replied, “I didn’t know I was supposed to be looking for him, sir.”
The problem with seeking the lost is that they are constantly moving. In fact, we are all difficult to reach by God if we keep moving around or moving away.
In the first two parables it is obvious that the lost sheep and the lost coin are sought out by the shepherd and the woman, but in the one about the lost son there comes a point when the son quits running and turns his heart toward home. He was lost because he had been on the run from his father. However, it is important to notice that when he came home, his father saw him at a distance and ran to meet him. Many of us are running from God in some fashion. We move completely away from him or we start keeping a part of our lives away from him. But Jesus searches for us. He keeps looking to the horizon to see if we have stopped running and have begun to look toward home. When he sees us coming back, he runs to meet us, wraps his loving arms around us, cries tears of joy, gives us everything he has for us, celebrates in a big party and restores us to his family as if we had never left.
He does not force us to stay and he does not force us to come home, yet he keeps looking and waiting with anticipation and expectation for us to turn back. If you are running from home (God or his church) and think you can’t come back you are mistaken. He’s watching. Stop moving, turn around and see that he is there to welcome you home.
This Sunday we will continue our series of messages from the theme Holy Stories, looking at the third parable of the lost son. This one is titled Come Home based on Luke 15:11-32. I want to encourage you to come and be edified by the message of God’s love for you, but I also want to encourage you to bring your friends who don’t know Christ so that they too can learn of his search for them. There will be no guilt trips or harsh condemnation, only the story of God’s amazing love for us all. I hope to see you Sunday!
In Christ’s seeking love,
Jon
Stop Moving!
Mary Brumbaugh’s husband, an airline pilot, often has difficulty locating items around the house. One day he asked Mary where the salt was. Annoyed, she responded, "How on earth can you find Detroit at night in a blizzard, but you can’t find the salt in your own kitchen?"
"Well, darling," he replied, "they don’t move Detroit!”
Jesus parables of the lost sheep, the lost coin, and the lost son in Luke 15 tell how God is on a search and recovery mission! When we talk about people as being lost we are not talking about people who need to find Jesus. They are people Jesus is seeking to find.
I remember the character, “Lieutenant Dan” played by Gary Sinise in the movie “Forrest Gump.” I recall the Lieutenant mockingly asking Forrest (played by Tom Hanks) if he had found Jesus yet. To which Forrest replied, “I didn’t know I was supposed to be looking for him, sir.”
The problem with seeking the lost is that they are constantly moving. In fact, we are all difficult to reach by God if we keep moving around or moving away.
In the first two parables it is obvious that the lost sheep and the lost coin are sought out by the shepherd and the woman, but in the one about the lost son there comes a point when the son quits running and turns his heart toward home. He was lost because he had been on the run from his father. However, it is important to notice that when he came home, his father saw him at a distance and ran to meet him. Many of us are running from God in some fashion. We move completely away from him or we start keeping a part of our lives away from him. But Jesus searches for us. He keeps looking to the horizon to see if we have stopped running and have begun to look toward home. When he sees us coming back, he runs to meet us, wraps his loving arms around us, cries tears of joy, gives us everything he has for us, celebrates in a big party and restores us to his family as if we had never left.
He does not force us to stay and he does not force us to come home, yet he keeps looking and waiting with anticipation and expectation for us to turn back. If you are running from home (God or his church) and think you can’t come back you are mistaken. He’s watching. Stop moving, turn around and see that he is there to welcome you home.
This Sunday we will continue our series of messages from the theme Holy Stories, looking at the third parable of the lost son. This one is titled Come Home based on Luke 15:11-32. I want to encourage you to come and be edified by the message of God’s love for you, but I also want to encourage you to bring your friends who don’t know Christ so that they too can learn of his search for them. There will be no guilt trips or harsh condemnation, only the story of God’s amazing love for us all. I hope to see you Sunday!
In Christ’s seeking love,
Jon
Recent
Archive
2025
April
2024
January
September
November
2023
July
Categories
no categories
Tags
no tags
No Comments