When Israel Was a Child

 When Israel was a child, I loved him.

— From Hosea 11:1

It was the summer of 1980. I was in Shamrock, Texas, visiting my grandparents, chasing a kind of rite of passage. My older siblings had done their own Texas summers, and I wanted mine before turning twenty. What I didn’t know was how badly I needed it. The events of that spring—deeply traumatic, involving Drs. Smith and Anderson—had left wounds I hadn’t even begun to understand.

That’s when I got invited to a church camp called Camp Texas—a legacy gathering of the Advent Christian Conference. Odd thing, really. I was a college student. What business did I have going to a youth camp?

But God had a plan.

I ended up on staff, thanks to my second cousin Larry Johnson. And during that week, I encountered something I still carry 45 years later. The evangelist, Cameron Ainsworth, also a skilled magician, preached on this verse from Hosea—while weaving it into a powerful sleight-of-hand routine. But the real magic was in the image he gave us:

A father holding up baby pictures of his now-estranged son. Choked up, laughing through tears. “Wasn’t he a good kid? Didn’t he bring us such joy?”

That’s how God sees us. Not with cold judgment. But with a heart aching for the sweetness of our early love. With memories framed on the mantel of heaven. With stories He still tells the angels.

God doesn’t call us back because He’s angry. He calls us because He misses us.

He remembers the child you were. He loved you then. He loves you still.