Have you ever felt like you were being watched or followed? Imagine how criminals on the run must feel! The following is from March 18, 2007 and looks at the Lord's pursuit of his children.
I caught a section on Sunday Morning on CBS before worship service today. The topic was the FBI's Ten Most Wanted list as it celebrated the fifty-sixth anniversary of its conception. The brainchild of Director J. Edgar Hoover, Most Wanted was implemented to access media coverage, giving the public a face to be on the lookout for. Since 1950, some 485 fugitives have made the infamous roll call with 455 being captured or surrendering. The most well-known current resident is Osama Bin Laden, wanted for terrorism that came before the September 11 attacks. Seven women have been listed over the years, but there have been no females for decades. When one of the Ten is captured, the slot is filled by suggestions from FBI field offices. It must be traumatic to be voted onto the Most Wanted group; the FBI notes that a number have suffered heart attacks upon learning of their new designation! Donald Eugene Webb has been on the poster since 1981 for the murder of a law officer. After more than twenty-five years, you wonder which definition fits him, the dead part or the alive part. How can you stay on the run that long?
Many of my father's counseling sessions these days are handled over the phone. Unless Dad has someone to sit with Mom, it's often the best option available. When I'm home, I inadvertently am privy to one-ended mentoring dialogues. Several times in my most recent trip to St. Louis, I listened as my dad made mention of and dissected one of the more noted religious poems, The Hound Of Heaven, by Francis Thompson. An Englishman who suffered from tuberculosis and opium addiction, Thompson passed away at only forty-seven years in 1907 but not before penning one of the most brilliant treatises on God's unwavering pursuit of the wandering sinner. My interpretation of Thompson's lengthy work is that the Lord simply wore out the fleeing soul, never wavering in his hunt. The FBI is unrelenting in its passion to put the various Public Enemies behind bars. Our Father in Heaven is relentless in his passion to restore the souls of the children he sent his son for. To read Hound, you feel there is no resisting a God that simply won't let us go. We know that many do resist successfully but that is our choice, never his. While the FBI narrows its list to ten, God has no limitations. Fugitives dread making the FBI's Most Wanted; we should all thank the Lord he listed us. I plan on staying captured.Applicable quote of the day:
"I figured out how to catch fugitives without a gun."
John Walsh (America's Most Wanted)
*To read The Hound Of Heaven, click on the link below.*
1 comment:
Christianity is the only religion where God seeks us instead of us seeking God. Doylene
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