Our Little Children

The police were taking a dead teenager out of a shallow grave. I watched this on my television screen and I thought about the boy’s parents. He had been missing for three days! Had they been worried about him? All they knew was that three boys had gone out somewhere and now their son was dead! The police are still looking for the other missing two boys.

Oh! how I wish this story was big news, but it isn’t. There are stories every day about lost boys and girls. Are the parents even home when the child decides to go somewhere? When was the last time they sat down to eat dinner together? Do they know where their child was going and with whom?

God deeply cares about these little children and it is up to us to see that they are okay. There are a couple of parables in the book of Matthew, chapter 15 that tells about God’s love. In one of these, Jesus tells us about a man who has one hundred sheep in his care. One is lost. Does he not leave the ninety-nine sheep and go to find the lost lamb? When he finds him, he puts the lamb on his shoulders, rejoicing, and goes back to his other sheep.

God loves those thousands of young teenagers who have left home for one reason or another. He desperately wants each one of them to return. Their parents want them to return too, but God has put them in charge and many of them have failed as parents. They have not really cared who their teenagers are with or where they are going. They have not punished them when they needed it. They haven’t been with them enough, even to having dinner together. Just talking or praying together once in awhile would be good.

Teenagers are children needing someone to lean on. Most of them will tell you they don’t believe there is a God. They need parents who care and will tell them that they love them and that God loves them too. They will be like the man in the Bible who goes out to find the little-lost lamb and bring him home. What can we do to help these lost little lambs? We can pray for them and instead of saying, “Those teenagers! How awful they are, always getting into trouble!” Let’s figure out how to find them, put them on our shoulders and bring them home.