Bands of love that stretch but don’t break

Last week at the homeless shelter, I met two mothers. One was homeless. One was not. One had a homeless son. One did not. Yet both shared the same unbreakable bands of love.

The first mother pulled into the parking lot and asked if I had seen her son, Cooper. He needed a ride to the doctor, and she was his last option. I told her I hadn’t seen him, not realizing he was in the shower. She waited quietly in her car, perhaps wondering if this would be another missed opportunity, another step backward.

A few minutes later, Cooper appeared at the door, hair still wet, acknowledged his mom, and slipped back inside. I walked over to apologize for my mistake. After a long silence, she began to cry.

I caught a glimpse of the heartbreak that comes from loving an adult child who keeps making destructive choices. “Hard,” was all I could think to say.

“Hard,” she agreed.

She couldn’t rescue him. But she couldn’t stop loving him either.

The Lord asks through the prophet Isaiah, “Can a mother forget her infant?” (Isaiah 49:15). That mother certainly could not.

Later that day, I met another mother who was herself homeless. Her adult son was living in the shelter’s transitional housing and steadily rebuilding his life. She slept in her pickup truck in the parking lot simply to remain close to him. As I watched them together, I saw the same deep bond: a mother’s hope, her quiet pride, and her desire to see her son flourish despite the mistakes that had marked both of their lives.

Hosea gives us one of Scripture’s most tender images of God’s love: “I led them with bands of love… I lifted them to my cheek.” (Hosea 11:4).

Those are the bands of love I witnessed that day.  Not chains that control, but bonds that never let go.

Many of us have wandered. We have ignored God’s voice and made choices that hurt ourselves and others. Yet God never says, “I’m finished with you.” He continues to draw us back with patient, faithful love.

Today I think especially of parents whose bands of love are being stretched. It was easier when you could buckle your children into a stroller and take them where they needed to go. Now they make their own decisions, sometimes with painful consequences. Yet the bonds remain.

Please pray for sons and daughters who are still finding their way, and for the parents who continue to love them. Our love alone may not change a heart. But when our bands of love are joined to God’s, they become instruments of his grace.