But God yearns for his people 

Hosea 11:1-4, 7, 8, 11; 12:6 When my people were children, I loved them … I myself taught them to walk, leading them by the hand. But they don’t know or even care that it was I who took care of them. I led them along with my ropes of kindness and love. I myself stooped to feed them. … But my people are determined to desert me. … Oh, how can I give you up? How can I let you go? My heart is torn within me, and my compassion overflows. … Someday, the people will follow me. … And I will bring them home again, says the Lord. … So come back to your God.

In Hosea 10, God spoke like a farmer. In chapter 11, he is a parent, broken over his children’s rebellion against him. A New Testament parallel is Jesus’ parable often called “The Prodigal Son.” In both cases, the father yearns for the return of his beloved, fugitive child, longing for restoration.

Shutterstock: Adam Jan Figel

I may have commented before that when I write stories, the characters themselves tell me what happens to them, and I just write it down. One scene, reminiscent of Luke 15, still brings tears to my eyes.

In Horse Thief 1898, Cally and Teddy went missing because they had been kidnapped by abusive relatives who wanted to use the orphans as farm labor. The loving people who had been caring for them did all they could to find and free them, but it was the children themselves who found their way home.

Nathanael, prepared to attend Ignacy Paderewski’s Carnegie Hall piano concert,

… sat on his porch swing singing an off-key tune to [his baby] Jimmy, waiting for James to bring the brougham. How grand to hear the famous Mr. Paderewski in the new concert hall!

Tobias wandered out holding the hand of his brother Ben, faces scrubbed, hair still wet.

“Father, look! Is that—”

Nathanael leaped to his feet, thrust Jimmy into Tobias’s arms, and ran down the street, his arms open wide.

Cally and Teddy were filthy. It didn’t matter.

Just so, our Father is thrilled when we come home to him. Even when we’re filthy. He is the one who makes us clean again; to quote Curt Thompson, “Seen, soothed, safe, and secure.”