I recently recollected the childhood memory of a time when I tried to run away from home. I suppose that everyone has one of those to remember. My dad literally DID run away from home at the age of 13, never to return until he was an adult, but that was in 1926; times were a little different then. My decision to run away came at the ripe old age of 5. I was upset at my parents for something that I can't remember now, so it was probably typical childhood "stuff". My brother, 10 years my elder, told me that if wanted to run away that he would help me pack. I wasn't bright enough at that age to wonder"Why is helping me to leave?", but he did help me; we put everything I held dear to me in my small 45rpm record carry case. These were very essential survival type items like some toy soldiers, a couple of toy cars, two 45rpm records(what was going to play them on?), and if I remember, a toothbrush(no toothpaste). I don't recall what else was in there, but it could not have been much to go into that small case. Well, it came time for me to run away, and my brother bade me farewell...I snuck out the back door of our house, and I started down the hill in our yard towards our lake, and was not gone more that 50 yards, when I became lonely and scared, so I returned to our back yard and sat down near a tree to contemplate my escape a little more. As I sat there, my brother came out of the house laughing at me...he said, "I thought you were running away." I said, "Oh, I am...I just have to figure out which way to go." I still remember the smile on his face as he asked me where I would stay, I told him,"In the woods, I guess." "Well what are you going to eat?" he asked. After a few more of his reality questions, I realized that I had better save runing away for another day, so I stayed there 14 more years until I got married. Now that wasn't so bad, was it? My Mom and Dad had a good laugh about all this when they found out, but I did not think it was so funny at the time.
I am sure my parents could have found me if I had run away, though they may not have known where I was for a time. Our Heavenly Father deals with "runaways' all the time, but the differnce is that He sees and know all, so He has no problem locating His children. We, in our "human-ness" somehow think that we can run and hide from God when we don't want to fellowship with Him for various and sundry reasons. It could be that we don't think that we need God, or we are running away because of some guilt or rebellion. But the one thing that remains constant is that we can't run from Him any more than Adam and Eve could. What we fail ro realize is that God loves us, really loves us just the way we are; He may not approve of our lives, the way we are, but He does love us, and that is the key to renewing our fellowship with Him, NO matter what we may be like. We run away, and God tends to stay, He is there all the time...waiting ...waiting patiently for our return to that quiet place of peace and solitude that we can freely have when we come into His presence. Many times I have gotten out of fellowship with God, and felt SO bad about it; and now I find that when I become distracted with this life, and stray away, that when I return, He is not standing there waiting to beat me or punish me in some way because I have been gone. He is happy at my return, and I am happy for the peace I can have by going back to that quiet place. I want God's blessings, so I have decided that I don't want to leave His side. I still do, from time to time, but I yearn to come home to Him, just like a long, lost, lover returns home to his loved one from some far away land. I am miserable while I am away from God, so my little trips are short ones now, and I long for the day when I can be in His presence FOREVER!!!
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