On a nice sunny Saturday, a family drives into town to do a bit of shopping. The first stop is Locke’s 5 and 10. The children admire the toys and books while the mother makes a few purchases and chats with the owners. The next stop is two doors down—The Dress Shop. The older child is soon bored with looking at dresses and returns to Locke’s to look at the books again. Some time passes, and the mother realizes that the child is no longer with her and begins searching everywhere. The child is found, looking at books at the 5 and 10. Punishment is then administered from the father for “getting lost.”
Does God ever chastise people for “getting lost” or wandering away from Him? Of course He does. In our study of the minor prophets, we see time and time again where the children of Israel were told that they were doing wrong, but they would not listen. They had to suffer the consequences for refusing to stay with God and “wandering off”. We are just as guilty as the Israelites for wandering away from our heavenly Father. Like the child in the story, sometimes a person doesn’t see the wrong in his actions and it has to be pointed out to him. The prophets were trying to tell the Israelites just that; they had gone away from God and they were going to be punished for doing so.
And sometimes we, as Christians, have to have the courage to correct our friends or even our families when they have fallen away from God. It is not easy to correct someone, but our intervention may be the only way to get them back on the right track. Rest assured, after I received my punishment, I figured out real quick that I wasn’t going to wander off to look at books again.
Next time I would tell them first.
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