WordPoints - June 3, 2006

The God Who Waits for Our Return

Thus says the Lord: "Will they fall and not rise?

Will one turn away and not return?"

Jeremiah 8:4

One of the wondrous aspects of God's character is the love with which He waits for us to turn back to Him. Only He could have made it possible for us to return, of course, but since He has done so, a failure to return is contrary to all wisdom, and even to common sense. Listen to the words with which God implored Judah in Jeremiah's day: "People of Jerusalem, when you stumble and fall, you get back up, and if you take a wrong road, you turn around and go back. So why do you refuse to come back to me? Why do you hold so tightly to your false gods?" (Jeremiah 8:4,5 Contemporary English Version).

The God who waits for our return is a God who has promised us forgiveness. We can't fathom the value of what He had to sacrifice to make this forgiveness available, but we can stand in awe of the sacrifice and its underlying love. More than that, we can determine that our gratitude will be shown in our deeds. We can turn back to God, grounding all our hopes in the goodness of His character and living out the balance of our days in commitment to His truth. However foolishly we have forsaken Him, God remains the God He has always been. Long ago He revealed Himself to Moses as "the Lord, the Lord God, merciful and gracious, longsuffering, and abounding in goodness and truth, keeping mercy for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin . . . " (Exodus 34:6,7). "To the Lord our God belong mercy and forgiveness, though we have rebelled against Him" (Daniel 9:9).

But the God who waits for our return is also a God who has promised us rest, and rest is surely what we need. Although we were designed for joy, most of us have worn ourselves out in counterfeit pleasures and substitute satisfactions. Hardly even knowing what we were looking for, we've been looking for joy in all the wrong places, and with truly tragic results. Our foolishness has worn us out. But God has made possible our return to Him, and it's only in such a return that the prospect of real joy can spring to life. Here is where our homesick hearts should come to rest. Here, at last, is where we find a perfect Friend.

There can be no happiness equal to the joy

of finding a heart that understands.

Victor Robinsoll

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Copyright © 2006 by Gary Henry - Visit the WordPoints web site: www.wordpoints.com