The sorrow you have poured out before the Lord has been heard, and it is right and good that you have asked others to watch with you in prayer. A broken heart is a great ill, and there are several forms of it, but none more piercing than when a child is far off and will not answer. We very speedily care for bodily diseases, for they urge us to seek a physician, yet this wound of the spirit drives us to the one Physician who alone can heal. That healing is generally apart from all means, God only does it, and He binds up the broken hearted with His own hand.
You speak of a son who once confessed Jesus and was baptized, and who now walks far from Him, and who since an accident will not answer text nor email. This is the way of the prodigal. If we had read that the father had kicked his prodigal son we should not have been astonished, yet the father in the parable was to represent God, and He does not so. When the son was yet a great way off, his father saw him, and had compassion, and ran, and fell on his neck, and kissed him much. Those many kisses had many meanings. They meant love and forgiveness, and they combined to make the wayward son feel that his sin was indeed all gone. They meant full restoration, so that when the prodigal came back and his father had kissed him, he was to his father as if he had never gone away. They meant joy and comfort, to make him happy then and there, with music and dancing, for God will rejoice over a poor soul that has wandered far from Him but at last returns. And they meant strong assurance, to make him quite certain that it was all real. All the promises in this Book belong to every repentant sinner who returns to God believing in Jesus Christ, His Son. So we pray that your son may know this prodigal love, not as a notion, but as a real saving work of God.
Take heart also from the old testament prodigal, Manasseh. He was the child of an eminently godly father, Hezekiah, who worked that which was good and right and truth before the Lord. Yet Manasseh, though a son of David with David's blood in his veins, had not David's ways in his heart, and became a wild degenerate shoot of a noble vine, defiled and cruel beyond conception. He was much to be pitied when his good father was called away and his tender son was left alone amid flatterers and idolaters. Yet even this man, when he was in affliction, besought the Lord his God and humbled himself greatly, and God was entreated of him. If the Lord could reclaim Manasseh, He can reclaim your son. The same is seen in Peter. Peter was down, but he was soon up again, and his restoration was brought about by two outward means, the crowing of the cock and a look from the Lord. The Lord turned and looked upon Peter, and that divine look did the deed. It severed him from the crowd and melted him to repentance. We pray for such a look of Christ upon your son, that overwhelming evidence of sin may give way to overwhelming grace.
You ask for healing and for an end to silence and darkness. Healing and forgiveness are placed in happy conjunction and both bestowed on the Lord's people. When Jesus healed the sick of the palsy He said, Son, be of good cheer, your sins are forgiven you, and then, Arise and take up your couch. Pardon and healing were one. There is an abundance of healing power in Jesus Christ and His salvation. Not only is His fruit sweet and nourishing, but the very leaves of the tree are for the healing of the nations, and the least thing about Christ is healing. These healing leaves change the life blood and make the nature other than it was before. The Lord has begun to heal us and the healing virtue which His grace has infused into us will work health and cure till we shall be without spot or wrinkle. So we look for healing for your son's body after his accident, and far more for the healing of his soul, and for the healing of your own wounded spirit as you wait.
He is the God of Peace and He has, on His part, prepared everything that is necessary for a perfect reconciliation. The work of reconciliation He committed to His Son, and the word of reconciliation He has committed to us. We are not sent to find out a way of reconciling you to God, for He has committed unto us the word of reconciliation, that without any violation of His justice He can have mercy upon those who have offended Him, through Jesus Christ alone. There is no other name by which we must be saved. We do not ask God to bless what is contrary to His word, but we ask Him to draw sinners to repentance and to restore what sin has broken according to His holy will. For you as a father without a partner to lean upon, know that the Lord Himself draws near to watch with you. He has committed unto His people the ministry of reconciliation because we can speak from experience of the joy which being at peace with God brings.
Therefore we will stand with you and pray without ceasing. We will pray that the Lord will soften your son's heart, that He will incline him to answer and to speak again, that the silence will be broken in God's good time, and that the darkness and evil which now holds him will be purged. We will pray that the Spirit will bring him to consider his way, to retrace his steps and to seek his God who in Christ Jesus can heal him, and that he will return in repentance and faith to Jesus Christ alone for salvation. We will pray that you will be sustained, that you will not heed the voice of the elder brother who would keep the prodigal away, but that you will wait as the father waited, with love that runs to meet, and that you will be kept from presumption and given a real healing from His hand.
May the Sun of Righteousness rise upon you both with healing in His wings, and may He who works cures very suddenly touch and the deed be done at once, to the praise of His grace. We commit you to Him who is able to restore perfectly, and to make merry over the returning wanderer. Amen.