Your sorrow and your longing cry out from the page, and it is a grief to think of a home so broken, a husband and father so straying. Yet I thank God with you that He has shown you what was amiss in your own heart. That is a tender mercy, a kiss from the Father to your own soul. A broken and a contrite heart He will not despise. When we see our own sin, even in measure, it prepares us to pray aright for another.
But now look beyond yourself to the great hope. The one you yearn for has wandered into a far country, feeding upon husks which cannot satisfy. He is in the mire of a great sin, a sin that sunders what God has joined, that breaks covenant, and that brings dishonour upon the name of Christ. For a man to leave his own wife and children for another woman is an evil way, and you cannot, you must not, ask God to bless that false union or to comfort him within it. To pray for his return is right and godly; to pray for peace upon his rebellion would be to ask a poison for his soul. Our Master cannot smile upon a man while he hugs his iniquity to his breast.
Yet there is a voice that cries, “Return! Return!” It is the cry of the wounded Saviour, whose heart yearns for His wandering sheep. The Father stands at the gate, ready with forgiveness, with the robe and the ring, with kisses unnumbered to welcome the prodigal back, but only back. There can be no feasting in the strange country, no fellowship with the harlot and with God. The word is, “Return now every one from his evil way.” He must turn his face from that woman and from that place, and with a true loathing of his sin, come back to the Lord his God, and to the wife of his covenant.
Your part is to be all the more instant in prayer. Not the cold, formal prayer of the mouth, but the agony that wrestles, the importunity that will not let the Angel go until He bless. Plead with God for his soul as Daniel pleaded for the sanctuary, as the Syrophoenician cried, “Lord, help me!” This is a prayer which God the Holy Spirit Himself stirs up within you. Let the memory of your own sin make you humble, not hopeless. Let it drive you more fiercely to the throne of grace, where Jesus ever lives to intercede. He has prayed for you; He can pray for your husband. It is a prevenient mercy that before the snare is fully broken, Christ’s prayer goes up for the wandering one.
Yet think it not strange if the Lord’s answer is to bring the bitter fruit of that sin crashing down around him. The famine in the far country is often the surest messenger of mercy. When the husks are gone, when the false dream shatters, when he comes to himself in the miry sty of his own making, then shall the cry of your faith be heard. “Return, ye backsliding children, and I will heal your backslidings.” The Lord is able to make his sin more bitter than gall, so that he loathes the very feast he now enjoys. Pray that conviction may seize him, that no rest be given to his eyes nor slumber to his eyelids until he is shaken from his strong delusion.
Pray, dear pleading soul, for the God of peace to be with you. Cry, “Wilt thou not revive us again, that thy people may rejoice in thee?” Pour out your heart for your husband’s very soul, that he may not trifle with his convictions, for eternity is too short to lament such trifling. Yet remember, while you seek his return, your first Husband is Christ. He will never leave you nor forsake you, though all earthly props give way. The sweetest promise in all this bitter cup is that you, returning to your own first love, shall find Christ drawing near to you in the furnace. The prayer of agony, prayed in company with a sympathizing Saviour, will not fail. Though the vision tarry, wait for it.
