Re-connection

It all started with a picture.

Recently, my week began in a most unusual way. I had a FB message from a classmate from elementary school days back when there were country schoolhouses in Missouri.

She asked me to settle a dispute with a friend (who was also a school mate from those country school days) as to where I was located in a picture of a long-ago Vacation Bible School gathering at the country church my family attended.

My dad farmed in Marion County Missouri (near Hannibal) from the time I was four until nine years old. Then my folks bought a farm 40 miles away. Forty miles is nothing now but in those days, it was almost a world away and I eventually lost contact with nearly all my classmates and church friends.  

circa 1952

Thanks to my friend, Jeanie (the elementary school classmate), I have re-connected with one of my best friends from those years, Joy, who posted the VBS picture I mentioned above. During that week my friend “friended” me on FB and now her younger sister has done so, also. It was an absolute thrill to talk with my friend on the phone after having lost touch with her for probably 50 years.

Such an experience gives me a glimpse into how long-separated siblings or family members must feel when they are re-united. A friend recently told me a poignant story of the daughter she had given away at birth as a single college student. Just recently, this daughter whom she’d only glimpsed at birth, worked through adoption records and this birth mother was united with her child. What a joyous time!

That makes me also think of the story Jesus told about a father who yearned to see his younger son who had taken his inheritance so he could go and do “his own thing.” An important part of the story is a picture of this loving father so overjoyed to see his wandering son return, he called for a feast in the son’s honor as well as luxurious new clothes (as he came home in rags).

That’s an understandable illustration of how God feels when one of His wandering children come back “home” to Him. Like many of our emotions, I think He gives us great joy in re-connecting with friends, family members, or even Him. 

Many thanks--Jeanie and Joy.