the priest with the prodigal, that didn't return

1 Samuel 4:12-22

Immediately, a Benjaminite raced from the front lines back to Shiloh. Shirt torn and face smeared with dirt, he entered the town. Eli was sitting on his stool beside the road keeping vigil, for he was extremely worried about the Chest of God. When the man ran straight into town to tell the bad news, everyone wept. They were appalled. Eli heard the loud wailing and asked, “Why this uproar?” The messenger hurried over and reported. Eli was ninety-eight years old then, and blind. The man said to Eli, “I’ve just come from the front, barely escaping with my life.” “And so, my son,” said Eli, “what happened?”

The messenger answered, “Israel scattered before the Philistines. The defeat was catastrophic, with enormous losses. Your sons Hophni and Phinehas died, and the Chest of God was taken.”  At the words, “Chest of God,” Eli fell backward off his stool where he sat next to the gate. Eli was an old man, and very fat. When he fell, he broke his neck and died. He had led Israel forty years.

 His daughter-in-law, the wife of Phinehas, was pregnant and ready to deliver. When she heard that the Chest of God had been taken and that both her father-in-law and her husband were dead, she went to her knees to give birth, going into hard labor. As she was about to die, her midwife said, “Don’t be afraid. You’ve given birth to a son!” But she gave no sign that she had heard.  The Chest of God gone, father-in-law dead, husband dead, she named the boy Ichabod (Glory’s-Gone), saying, “Glory is exiled from Israel since the Chest of God was taken.”

This is probably one of the hardest things I have been asked to write about, and probably the hardest few months I have been asked to walk through.  On days where it is just really hard, difficult, overwhelming, and often very lonely, I am so grateful that Jesus goes ahead of me to endure through these things.  Things I don't have to do, but things I GET to do.  Because really, I don't HAVE to.  I could always walk away from this, and go back to living "my" way.  I could.....but I'm not.

Back in May one of my boys was arrested.  If you have ever had a son get arrested, then I now know how you feel.  It has completely wrecked me.  It has broken my heart.  It has grieved me.  It has shaken me deep down in my heart.  It has taken me to a whole new place with Jesus I have not been before.  It has, well...all of the above and more.  

While I have known this boy for a few years, it wasn't until this past fall that I really got to "know" him, and earlier this year one day in the car the Lord just did something big between us.  Opened up a door for me to just jump right into living life with him.  Since then, he has been my son, whom I have grown to love so quickly and so much, so you can imagine how hard the last 40 days have been since he was arrested.

Regardless of how he got there, when you see your son walk into a courtroom in an orange jump suit, eyes swollen from being pepper sprayed by the police, hands and feet chained where he can barely walk or move......It wrecks you.  Then you have to hear the judge make their decision, then see him walk out of the room, not knowing when you will get to see him or talk to him again.....It wrecks you.  Then spending lots of money weekly for him to call you collect, because he just needs to know you will answer and tell him you love him.....It wrecks you.  

My first visit to see him out in the Raymond jail......yep, it wrecked me.  On my way there I was praying and the Lord told me to share Luke 15 with him.  So I did, and then we just sat there looking at each other through the screen and cried. 

 By this time a lot of men and women of doubtful reputation were hanging around Jesus, listening intently. The Pharisees and religion scholars were not pleased, not at all pleased. They growled, “He takes in sinners and eats meals with them, treating them like old friends.” Their grumbling triggered this story.   “Suppose one of you had a hundred sheep and lost one. Wouldn’t you leave the ninety-nine in the wilderness and go after the lost one until you found it? When found, you can be sure you would put it across your shoulders, rejoicing, and when you got home call in your friends and neighbors, saying, ‘Celebrate with me! I’ve found my lost sheep!’ Count on it—there’s more joy in heaven over one sinner’s rescued life than over ninety-nine good people in no need of rescue.

His second court date was Monday morning.  I have been praying my guts out for grace from the judge, mercy from the judge, and looking at every possible option to try to get him home.  Nothing is working out right now, and the judge showed no grace, and no mercy on my boy.  That same being wrecked seeing him in the jump suit chained up, was even harder this time.  He was sitting so close to me in the courtroom I just wanted to grab him, hug him, throw him over my shoulders, carry him out, and bring him home and love him.

Early Monday morning I was up praying and the Lord spoke so loud, so clear, so quickly, he said, "I am changing the course for Mike."   Not what I was expecting to hear from Jesus.  I really was waiting on the Lord to say, "Cheer up kiddo, he's coming home today!"  The wreckage just continues to float ashore.  I don't know what the Lord is doing, but He is doing something so big and so great in my boy's life, that I just have to sit and wait. 

Now, back to 1 Samuel.

Eli's sons were a big mess (if you read the first part of this chapter and my previous blog), and this is where Eli finds out they had been killed.  This is the short version of what happened.

Eli was sitting, waiting, watching, for his son's to return.  But he wasn't really waiting for them, he was waiting for the ark.  When he was told that his sons had been killed, and the ark had been captured - he fell right off his stool and broke his neck and died, not because his sons died, but because he didn't get to have the ark back.  No mention of him even grieving for his sons.  Wow. 

Now read the other part of Luke 15

Then he said, “There was once a man who had two sons. The younger said to his father, ‘Father, I want right now what’s coming to me.’  “So the father divided the property between them. It wasn’t long before the younger son packed his bags and left for a distant country. There, undisciplined and dissipated, he wasted everything he had. After he had gone through all his money, there was a bad famine all through that country and he began to hurt. He signed on with a citizen there who assigned him to his fields to slop the pigs. He was so hungry he would have eaten the corncobs in the pig slop, but no one would give him any.  “That brought him to his senses. He said, ‘All those farmhands working for my father sit down to three meals a day, and here I am starving to death. I’m going back to my father. I’ll say to him, Father, I’ve sinned against God, I’ve sinned before you; I don’t deserve to be called your son. Take me on as a hired hand.’ He got right up and went home to his father.

“When he was still a long way off, his father saw him. His heart pounding, he ran out, embraced him, and kissed him. The son started his speech: ‘Father, I’ve sinned against God, I’ve sinned before you; I don’t deserve to be called your son ever again.’

“But the father wasn’t listening. He was calling to the servants, ‘Quick. Bring a clean set of clothes and dress him. Put the family ring on his finger and sandals on his feet. Then get a grain-fed heifer and roast it. We’re going to feast! We’re going to have a wonderful time! My son is here—given up for dead and now alive! Given up for lost and now found!’ And they began to have a wonderful time.

“All this time his older son was out in the field. When the day’s work was done he came in. As he approached the house, he heard the music and dancing. Calling over one of the houseboys, he asked what was going on. He told him, ‘Your brother came home. Your father has ordered a feast—barbecued beef!—because he has him home safe and sound.’

  “The older brother stalked off in an angry sulk and refused to join in. His father came out and tried to talk to him, but he wouldn’t listen. The son said, ‘Look how many years I’ve stayed here serving you, never giving you one moment of grief, but have you ever thrown a party for me and my friends? Then this son of yours who has thrown away your money on whores shows up and you go all out with a feast!’  “His father said, ‘Son, you don’t understand. You’re with me all the time, and everything that is mine is yours—but this is a wonderful time, and we had to celebrate. This brother of yours was dead, and he’s alive! He was lost, and he’s found!’”

So, you have two fathers, with two sets of sons.  The sons are lost, so far away, having done some very unholy, desperate, unthinkable things.  One father is waiting on his sons to bring back something to him, one father is waiting on the Lord to bring his son back. 

As I sit here and wait on my son to come back, I don't want to wait on God to come back to me - HE IS WITH ME through this.  He isn't in a box in a far off country, He is right here with me.  And I don't want to find out my son died and fall off my front porch swing and break my neck.

I want to wait on my son to come home, because the Lord has set him on a new course to get him home, and have the biggest party I have ever thrown in my life and scream so loud from the North End (aka, Midtown) MY BOY IS HOME!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I know when he comes home, He will be changed.  God said it, so it is so.