“He was basically in a deep freeze for the last 21 years.”  That’s how a public safety expert described the corpse of William Holland, an American mountaineer who fell 1000 feet to his death in the Canadian Rockies in 1989.  His body had been preserved by glacial ice; when it thawed, hikers found him earlier this month.  Today’s BBC website reports that more bodies are out there—at least two other climbers missing in Jasper National Park since the 1970s have never been found.

On a lighter side of the same theme, CNN tells us that a chimpanzee escaped from his exhibit in Oklahoma yesterday.  He was found walking along in the dry moat which separated his habitat from visitors, oblivious to the commotion he created.  Zoo workers finally coaxed him back to safety, so “now everyone is where they’re supposed to be,” a spokesperson assures us.

One more item in this morning’s “lost and found” box: American Idol executive producer Nigel Lythgoe is blaming Simon Cowell for Ellen DeGeneres’s exit from the show.  He claims that she was “constantly apologizing and overwhelmed, I think, by Simon.”  What he doesn’t explain is why she left the show when Mr. Cowell had already announced his departure.  Relationships are seldom subject to logic, I suppose.

Jesus told three stories in Luke 15 which seem appropriate to today’s theme.  In the first, a shepherd lost a sheep, so he left 99 others and searched until he found it.  In the second, a woman lost a coin, so she swept out her entire house until she found it.

In the third, a father lost a son.  So he let him leave with a third of the estate for a distant country where he “squandered his wealth in wild living” (v. 13).  He wasted everything his father had worked so hard to earn.  In desperation, this Jewish boy got a job feeding pigs.  In further desperation, he wanted to eat what they were fed.  All this time, what was his father doing?  He didn’t hunt for his lost son as the shepherd did his lost sheep or the woman her lost coin.

He waited at home for that moment when his son “came to his senses” (v. 17) and chose to come back.  Then he “ran to his son, threw his arms around him and kissed him” (v. 20).  He put a robe over his tattered clothes and a ring on his slop-stained finger and sandals on his filthy feet.  Then he threw a party, for “this son of mine was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is found” (v. 24).

If this father had dragged his son home before he wanted to return, his prodigal would have fled the next day.  Unlike a dead body in the Canadian Rockies or a chimpanzee in a zoo, people have free will.  They can make choices which help or hurt others and themselves.  All the while, our Father honors the freedom he has given us, waiting for that moment when we choose to come back to his will and purpose for us.  If we do, no matter where we’ve been or what we’ve done, he is ready to welcome us and rejoice in us and use us again.

How close to home is your soul this morning?

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 3:04 — 1.4MB)