He was an only son, and a bad one; but he had a praying mother, and she loved him with all her heart. Many a time she had begged him not to rouse his father's anger. And many a time she had prayed to God to turn her poor boy to repentance.
One day, having made his father more than usually angry, after many violent words, his father turned him out of the house, telling him he never wished to see him again.
This final breach broke the mother's heart. Gradually her health gave way under the sorrow and the longing she had for her boy. Doctors were called in, but their treatments were of no avail. Convinced that the trouble lay in her mind― some rooted sorrow― they asked her husband if he knew what it was. He was greatly distressed. He would have done anything to make her well So this day when the doctors told him they could do nothing if it was sorrow of heart that was sapping her life away, he went to her room, and leaning over her bed, said: "Darling, is there anything that I can do for you? I will do anything in my power to make you well, if I only knew what would do it." She turned and said: "Let me see my boy."
It was a large request. It meant sending for the son whom he had told he never wished to see again; but he hurried straight to the telegraph office. He had a friend who knew where the boy was, so he wired him to let his son know that his mother was very ill, and wanted to see him.
The moment the boy received the message he hastened home. He knocked on the door with all his might. He brushed past the servant who opened the door, prepared to rush upstairs to his mother's room. But he was restrained by the servant who begged him to go softly, as his mother was dying.
When he opened the door, his father was standing beside the bed holding one of his wife's hands in his. Without looking at his father he went to the opposite side of the bed and taking the other thin hand, kissed it over and over again. The mother seeing that her husband took no notice of his son, said: "Johnny, speak to your father, and ask him to forgive you."
"Never, Mother, will I speak to him!" he said. "He drove me out of the house, and said he never wished to see me again."
"Then the dying mother turned to her husband and said:
"Father, speak to our boy."
"Never!" he said. "He has killed you, and I will never forgive him."
The poor, broken-hearted mother gathered up her last bit of strength, and drew her two hands together, one clasping the hand of the father, the other clasping the hand of the son. Thus joining their hands, she breathed her last, leaving their hands together.
The father and son threw themselves on the bed in an agony of grief. At last the father lifted himself up and said: "We must not separate what she died in putting together; I must forgive you, my son."
Touching and suggestive as the above narrative is, it comes far short, as every human comparison must, of the grand and glorious truth connected with the infinite sacrifice of the Son of God. No anger towards us existed in the heart of God; there was no need of reconciliation on His side. "God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son." John 3:1616For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life. (John 3:16).
"Reconciliation is the bringing back to unity, peace and fellowship what was divided and alienated."