Your anguish shows the love God planted in a parent’s heart, but recall: the little one has a greater Father. He who fled into Egypt to sanctify every exile now holds your child. Will you not trust Him more than your own anxiety? Egypt received Him once for your sake, and no place is beyond His care. Do not be like the child who is forsaken and thoughtless, but like him that has a father. If you are wise, you will become as a child in simplicity of trust, not in panic. The merchant does not sit home merely wishing, he prepares the vessel, seeks the market. So you must labor in prayer, but also labor to make your home a haven of patience and self-control. Begin with small victories: when the heart rises in anger at delays or unknown dangers, choke the oath before it blooms. Teach your household, first, the holy letters of meekness. For how can you expect the Lord to bring your child safe if you yourself are unarmed, not knowing the Scriptures? Shall we go into battle without weapons and expect to come off safe?
Yet even this is not the deepest truth. You ask for his safe return, and soon. But consider: his truest safety is already secured if he belongs to Christ. This life is a spider’s web, tacked in a corner, easily swept away. If he were here, might he not later fall into grievous sin? Many children remain at home only to break their parents’ hearts. But if he is taken, or delayed, or brought back in God’s own time, what is that? Heaven and earth are being refashioned, and then you shall recover him in greater glory. God is not quick to punish, but rich in mercy and pity; yet He sometimes permits bitter providences to make your soul cling only to that Day. The passover Lamb has been slain; we cannot return to Egypt. We must press forward to the feast with the unleavened bread of sincerity. Do not, then, fret for his body’s return as though all hope hangs on it. Weep rather for any sin that clings to your own soul, or his, and let that grief propel you toward repentance. The spoiler who trusts in riches loses eternal goods; the parent who entrusts the child to God’s will is not spoiled, but enriched.
Examine yourself: are you making this petition with your eye only on the temporary relief, seeking an eye for an eye against the terror of loss? That old law was given to bind the hand of the aggressor, not to leave your own hand grasping. So now, bind your fear of disaster with the chain of faith. Your child is delivered, this moment, from all change and decay in the deepest sense, if he is sealed in baptism and clinging to the Lord. Ask boldly, “Bring him home safe,” but add always, “and bring us both to the eternal home, washed and ready.” Let the delay, if it comes, be a tutor to make you finish learning and then teach others what steadfast hope truly is. As Paul trusted his beloved and faithful child Timothy to put the Corinthians in remembrance, so entrust your child to the One who loves him perfectly. He will return, or not, in this little span, but the true meeting lies ahead. Do not make yourself an orphan in spirit. Cling to the Father, and your heart will stand safe even now.