GOD SEEKS AFTER ME
Wandering and Wondering
(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, O comfort My people . . . . Speak kindly to Jerusalem, and call out to her, that her warfare has ended, that her iniquity has been removed” (Isa. 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.
“All of us like sheep have gone astray” (Isa. 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.