Daily Encouragement: Year 2, Day 67

From Handbook to God’s Promises

GOD SEEKS AFTER ME

Wandering and Wondering
Read Isaiah 30:18

If you have young children, you know from personal experience the bane of every parent’s existence: dawdling.

You know the drill. You’re trying to get the kids ready to get to the grocery store, to church, or to visit friends. You’re under a time crunch, as always, and your youngest is engaged in full-throttle dawdle. After asking your child to put down the book and put on shoes for the fifth time, you lose it and go nose-to-nose with your wide-eyed offspring. “Come ON! We need to get GOING!” That’s when the tears begin.

But now what? The younger a child is, the more deliberate the next step needs to be: the restoration of fellowship. It’s natural for a child to assume that, having made a parent angry, he or she will continue to experience that anger. And it’s up to the parent to prove otherwise.

The parent who seeks out a wounded child says, in effect, “The discipline is over, and you have paid the price for your choice. Now—let’s pick up where we left off.” The parent who follows this pattern comes close to what God does with His children, preparing the child to ease into a relationship with the God whose justice is tempered by grace and compassion.

Isaiah spoke to the Israelites on God’s behalf and told them that the Lord longed to be gracious and compassionate to them. Even when Israel was disciplined by God, God still sought to reestablish fellowship and communion: “Comfort, comfort my people . . . . Speak tenderly to Jerusalem, and proclaim to her that her hard service has been completed, that her sin has been paid for” (Isaiah 40:1–2).

Like a father seeking out a fearful child—a child who doesn’t know whether he or she will be accepted after sinning—God seeks to comfort His people. God proves over and over in Scripture that He is a God of justice, grace, and compassion. He wounds and then comforts. He chastises and then chooses. He disciplines and then restores. It is the nature of God to seek, seek, and seek again.

“We all, like sheep, have gone astray” (Isaiah 53:6), but God cannot deny His shepherd’s heart. Don’t let wandering result in wondering. Be assured that God still seeks after you.

God’s Promise: Nothing you do will keep Him from seeking and finding you.