I Sorta' Know What He Feels Like

I don't know how many times I have heard - or taught on - the story of the Prodigal Son...if you are unfamiliar with it, it is about a man who had two sons...one day, the younger of the sons tells his father, "I wish you were dead! I want my inheritance."...the father concedes and gives him his share of the money...it doesn't take long before the son has bottomed out, spending all of the money on wild, sinful living...he decides that he needs to go home and apologize to his father and ask him if he can live as one of his servants...when he does, the father does something surprising...instead of punishing the son or making him apologize, he runs to him (he was looking for him), throws his arms around him, and throws him a huge party...his son, presumed lost and dead was now found and alive!...the father didn't care about all of the things his son might have done to waste the money and destroy his life...the only thing that mattered right now was celebrating the return of his son...

My dog ran away yesterday...Marcy and I were exhausted from a weekend with family and not much sleep...I was pretty excited about sitting in the recliner for a couple of hours between the SIMY meeting I had that ended at 3pm and the Vision Parties that I needed to be at by 6:30pm...as I was drifting off to sleepyland, I was startled awake by Marcy's voice: "Mike, Attie's gone!"...I had put her on the leash in the yard, and apparently she saw something that caught her eye because her collar was still attached to the leash and broken...we ran around the house calling for her...I then ran to the garage and got on my bike while Marcy got in my car and we began the search...I rode around calling her name trying to figure out where she might have gone...I asked every person I came across if they had seen her...some had, and they helped to narrow down our search area...finally, I saw Marcy walking across a field pointing in the direction that she saw Attie...I rode across the field, and when I got near the train tracks, I dropped my bike and began running...then I saw her!...I would have run to her, but I didn't want to scare her...so I called her name, and she stopped and looked at me...then when she recognized my voice and my face, she came running across the jagged rocks...she reached me and buried her head under my legs...I had no thought about punishing her or yelling at her...I was too overjoyed that we had found her...she had been lost, out on some great adventure, while I - and Marcy - was frantically searching for her, wanting her to come home...when at last we found her, the joy far overwhelmed any anger or disappointment that potentially could have been there...my dog was lost and dead, but now she is found and alive!...

I sorta' know what the dad felt like now...