A friend told me about a boy who was the apple of his parents’ eyes. But in his teens he went off the rails, dropped out of school and began hanging around with a bad crowd. Early one morning he staggered into his house completely drunk. His mother slipped out of bed and left her room. The father then followed and found her at her son’s bedside, softly stroking his matted hair as he lay passed out and drunk on the covers of his bed. ‘What are you doing?’ the father asked. She replied: ‘He won’t let me love him when he’s awake.’
That mother stepped into her son’s darkness with a love that was still there even though he didn’t yet love her back. And that’s how it is with God and us. The Bible says: ‘Can a mother forget the child she bore, though she may forget, I will not forget you, says the Lord.’