Forgiveness, Grace, Father/son relationships,  another chance

A friend of mine, the late G. W. Rosenbery, told me a story out of his early ministry. He was in a railway coach speeding across the state to attend a conference. Few people rode on trains in those days, and one boy in his late teens, apparently very nervous, attracted the attention of his fellow passengers.

The boy was fidgety and restless. He would sit in one seat for a few moments, then move down the car to another.

The minister began to watch him and study him; finally he sat down beside the boy and said, "What's troubling you, son? Worried about something? Maybe I can help you. I am a minister, and if you feel like telling me, I should like nothing better than to help you if I can." "Sure, sure," the boy said, "I don't mind telling you.

Are you acquainted with a little town named Springvale?" "Well, not exactly. I know of it. It is the next stop, isn't it?" "Yes," said the boy. "We'll be there in fifteen minutes. That's my home. I used to live there. My father and mother live there still, just a mile on this side of the town. Three years ago I had a quarrel with my father. I said, 'You'll never see me again.' I ran away from home. Three years, and they've been tough years. Sometimes I wrote to my mother. I wrote her last week and told her I would be on this train passing through. I told her I would like to come home just once; asked her if it was all right for me to stop, to hang something white outside the house so that I would know that father had agreed to let me stop. I told her not to do it unless father wanted it. She would do it regardless, you know, but I had to know how Dad feels."

The boy looked out the window, then started up excitedly.

"Look, sir, my house is just around the bend, beyond the hill. Will you please look for me, see if there is something white? I can't stand to look. If there isn't anything white ... you look, please!" The train lurched a bit as it made the slow curve, and the minister kept his eyes on the round of the hill. Then forgetting his dignity, he fairly shouted, "Look, son, look!"

There stood a little farmhouse under the trees, but you could hardly see the house for white. It seems that father and mother had taken every bed sheet, bedspread, tablecloth, pillowcase, and even handkerchiefs, and hung them out on the clothes line and the trees. The boy's face went white, his lips quivered. He couldn't talk. His nervous fingers clutched the cheap suitcase, and he was out of the car before it had wholly stopped at the water tank. The minister said that the last time he saw of him, he was running as fast as his legs could carry him, up the hill to the little house where the white sheets fluttered in the wind.