Thought For The Day

It was a beautiful fall day in the small community, a perfect day for the annual fall bazaar. The closed off streets were full of people with craft merchants lining each side. Jennifer Crowley had taken David, her six-year-old, to the bazaar for a great fall outing. As they walked down the street hand-in-hand, Jennifer met Sandra Franks and the two struck up a conversation. While they were talking, David impatiently pulled and tugged on his mother’s arm, "I wanna see the horses!" he insisted. A group of teenagers fooling around pushed by breaking Jennifer’s grip on David’s hand. After a brief moment of confusion Jennifer looked and David was no where to be seen. She quickly scanned the surrounding crowd but David had simply vanished. She told Sandra to begin looking up the street while she went the other way. After 10 minutes of searching she began to get frantic. She came upon Deputy Sheriff Darrell Height, told him what had happened and he immediately joined in the search. After 45 minutes with David no where to be found, Jennifer was now in a panic and began to cry, "Where is he?" As she wiped the tears from her eyes she scanned the crowd again and froze as she looked at the courthouse steps. There on the top step sat David watching and enjoying the small sea of people. Jennifer ran and picked up her little boy. "Momma, why are you crying?" David asks. With a big smile she answered, "Because I’m so glad to see you!"

In Luke 15, Jesus told three stories about lost things, a lost sheep, a lost coin and a lost son. In each story, the one who had lost something had great concern over the thing that had been lost. The man who lost the sheep left all the other sheep to search, the woman who lost the coin cleaned the whole house in the search and the father of the lost son never lost his love and compassion. When one of our members wanders from the family (James 5:19-20) we should become as frantic as Jennifer did when David disappeared in the crowd. However, many times we don’t even realize someone is missing until it’s too late. We must begin to practice one-on-one Christianity and go search for the wanderers. We must never lose our desire, care or compassion for each other. Let me encourage you to go and find those who have left our family here and when we find them…​

Jay Launius 2020 Maud church of Christ Maud, Texas