For a long time I lived my life ignorant of God's commandment, but one day as I was reading through John's Gospel, I came across these words of Jesus:

God's commandment is that we should receive eternal life. This eternal life has been given to me in return for nothing! I was really elated when I thought about it in this way. The Bible says that "whosoever shall not receive the kingdom of God as a little child, he shall not enter therein"(Mark 10:15). Receiving eternal life is really very simple.

Jesus didn't make up the words He spoke to us; He received the commandments of God and passed them on to us. Did Jesus tell us to be diligent in keeping the Law? Did He command us to attend church regularly? It isn't a question of belonging to a certain Christian denomination; all that matters is that we believe. The important point is that God's commandment is eternal life.

There's a world of difference between God's having given something to us and our trying to give something to God. What can we possibly give to God? All that remains for us to do is simply place our faith in Jesus Christ, God's only begotten Son. We need only relax and put our trust in Him.

One episode from a book I read a long time ago has remained in my memory. There was a mother who had lost her son, her only child. She used every penny she had in her attempt to find him. She put out announcements on the radio and advertisements in the newspapers, but it was all to no avail. When all her money had run out, she began to search for her son on foot. Then after several years like this, she was walking through a poverty stricken neighborhood one day when she noticed a child who looked just like her son. His face was filthy, his clothes were in rags, and his skin had broken out in sores, but it was definitely her son. What would the boy's mother have said?

"My son! Do you know how long I've been looking for you? Come on, let's go home."

Suppose the son had then replied,

"Mom. I can't go home like this. I'm too dirty. Let me first earn some money, take a bath, and get some new clothes, and then I'll come."

How would the mother have felt? Do these words indicate that the son knows what is in his mother's heart? If he had still been a young child and hadn't grown up yet, he probably would have simply run to his mother's arms and wept for joy. Since he had grown up a little, however, he would be concerned about such irrelevant matters and probably say something like,

"Just look at me. Look at the state I'm in!"

Is there any need for us to weigh our circumstances when we turn to God?

In Luke's Gospel we find the parable of the prodigal son. There was a man who had two sons. One day the younger son approached his father and asked for his share of the family fortune. He then took what was given to him and left for a distant land where he lived a life of dissipation. When he had used up all his money in this way, he found a job looking after pigs. He was so hungry that he longed even to eat the pods that were given to the swine, but there was no one who fed him. He would even have eaten the slightly rotten fruit from the pigs' swill, if he could have. So he began to think,

"In my father's house the hired men have more than enough to eat, but here I am dying of hunger. Wouldn't I be better off if I returned to my father and asked him to use me as one of his hired men? Then at least I would have plenty to eat."

So he set off for home. While he was still a long way off, his father saw him and came running to him. The father embraced his son and rejoiced, saying, "My son was dead but now he's alive again."

Then there's the story of a woman who had ten silver coins, but she lost one of them. She turned her house upside down as she searched carefully in every corner until she found it. Then she was so happy that she called together her friends and neighbors to celebrate with her.

There's also the parable of a shepherd who had one hundred sheep and lost one of them. So he left the ninety-nine sheep and went in search of the one that was lost. When he found it, he brought it home rejoicing and held a feast with his friends to celebrate.

As Jesus told this parable, He said,

There's a common thread that runs through all of these parables. Did the younger son return to his father expecting to be taken back as a son? He was even prepared to work as a servant. But how did the father greet his son? He didn't receive him as a servant but as the son he had lost.

The father found his son, the woman found her silver coin, and who found the lost sheep? It was the shepherd. All power and authority lies in God's hands. Before God, we too were lost but have been found again. It isn't that we have found God, but He has found us.