Washington Conference of Seventh-day Adventists

By Doug Bing, Washington Conference president

It was a moment of pure terror in my life as a parent. I had lost my child.

I was supposed to be a responsible parent watching the children at the department store while my wife shopped.

In retrospect I should have just stayed home with the children so that my wife could have shopped in peace. But thinking that we could have some family time and shop at the same time seemed like a good idea at the time. You know shop, take the kids for a treat, maybe ride the merry-go-round at the mall. Like I said seemed like a good idea at the time.

But now I had lost a child.

There in the store I couldn’t find my son. My heart almost stopped beating. Where was he?

There in the racks of clothing I quickly started to search. I started to call out for him. Who cares if people heard me; I wanted to find my son! I was desperate. I was frantic. I frankly was scared for him.

This all lasted less than 90 seconds. However, it seemed like forever.

My son popped out from under a rack of clothes with a big smile on his face that he had tricked his father into thinking that he was lost. Little did he know that he had taken a few years off his father’s life!

It’s a terrible feeling when we think we have lost our children.

We love our children with a love that only parents can understand and feel and to think that they are physically lost is a terrible feeling.

The wonderful book Steps To Christ tells us that God feels the same way about His children.

God went looking for His lost earthly children in the garden of Eden and called out to them asking, “Where are you?” He has been looking for his children ever since and that led him to the cross because his love for us was stronger than death itself.

He has called us to love others with this same love. To seek out those who are not in connection with God and point people to Him.

I pray that we have the same desire for our friends and neighbors to be found by Jesus as we do when a child goes missing.

As we share the gospel of Jesus Christ, it is a clarion call for all to be found by the grace, mercy, and love of Jesus and to come to Jesus with a smile knowing that they have been found.