Something to think about…
“We are therefore Christ’s ambassadors, as though God were making his appeal through us. We implore you on Christ’s behalf: Be reconciled to God!” ~ 2 Corinthians 5:2
As I reflected this morning about what it means for us to be “sent” by God as His ambassadors, a story by Max Lucado came to mind. He once shared about a loving mother in Brazil named Maria. This mother had a beautiful daughter named Christina who desperately wanted to leave their poor little village to enjoy the bright lights of Rio de Janeiro. Knowing her mother would never give her permission to leave; Christina packed a few things and left home one morning before dawn, leaving just a note behind. Of course, Maria was devastated.
She quickly packed some things to go in search of her daughter. She stopped at a drugstore on the way to the bus station and spent most of her money having pictures of herself printed. Maria knew Christina had no way of earning money, and she also knew that her daughter was too stubborn to ever give up. So Maria searched in the worst parts of Rio de Janeiro, her heart breaking knowing that her daughter would have to do unthinkable things just to survive. At each place Maria stopped - street corners, lobbies of seedy hotels, dirty bathroom mirrors - she would write a note on the back of a picture of herself and tape it up for everybody to see.
It didn’t take long for the money and the pictures to run out, so eventually Maria had to return to her village without Christina, heartsick that her daughter was lost in that urban jungle of Rio. A month or so later, Christina descended the hotel stairs of one of those seedy hotels, her young face tired, her bright eyes faded into dull, her countenance fallen, and now full of fear and pain.
A thousand times she had longed to trade these countless beds for her secure little mat back home in her village, but now that life seemed so far away in so many ways. As Christina reached the bottom of the stairs, she noticed something familiar. There on the lobby bulletin board was a picture of her mother. Christina’s eyes burned and her throat tightened. She removed the picture and written on the back of the photo was this message from her mother, Maria: “Christina, whatever you’ve done, wherever you’ve been, it doesn’t matter. Please come home. I love you.” And she did!
Jesus told a similar story about a lost son that revealed the Father’s broken heart for his lost children.
Home can sometimes feel a million miles away. But, we get to be the image, the sign, the message from God for the lost and broken that says: “Wherever you have been, whatever you have done, God can forgive you! Please come home. He loves you!”
How will you let God’s love and light shine through you this week? How will you participate in the Kingdom revolution today?