I was going to make an exception and be gone from my church over the weekend so I had to tape my weekly radio broadcast. The radio station was in Tulare, California, seventeen miles from where I pastored in Pixley, a little town in Central California. As I turned south on US 99, I noticed a poor fellow walking, almost aimlessly off the shoulder of the road in the bar ditch. On a sudden impulse, I pulled over and stopped.  The dear fellow got into my car and you could tell in a moment that something was troubling him.  Here is part of his sad story as I best remember it.  He had a praying mother whom he had rebelled against. As a teenage boy he drank and lived a wild life. Many a night he would come home and as he passed his mother’s room he would hear her weeping while crying out to God. He said that as he became more convicted of his sin he would rebel even more against his mother and her prayers. He finally either had to get saved or leave home. He left home one night after hearing his mother in prayer to God for him without even saying goodbye.  He continued drinking and soon became a skid row bum (his very words).
Years past and he never communicated with his mother and two lovely Christian sisters. One day as he passed through his home town he inquired about his mother only to find out that she had died two years before. He went by her graveside as he passed on his way out of town. The inscription on her tombstone broke his heart afresh. It read, “A loving mother who died praying for her wayward son.”  He fell even lower in sin and his life was void of any real happiness or peace.  Then he explained, last night while sitting at a bar in Fresno, California a barroom fight broke out. Someone threw a huge twenty-inch bottle and he was bumped, so the bottle passed right threw the space, which his head just occupied. Fear chilled him “through and through.” He said he began to tremble as he realized how close he had come to “going to hell” (his very words).  I left the bar. Something kept urging me to “get away, get away.” I have walked down this road ever since (about forty miles).  Needless to say, my heart was touched. There beside Highway 99 at the Pixley turnoff sat two grown men weeping. One, a preacher telling a poor wandering sinner about the Savior who loved him and paid for all of his sins by dying on the cross in his place as his substitute.  The other, a man who had ran as far from his mother’s prayers and from his Savior as he could run.  The man was wonderfully saved. I could not persuade him to stop for a bite to eat. He would not stop to rest. He had  renewed energy. “I got to get home. I got to tell my sisters that I am saved.” Then he turned to me and said, “Preacher, would you write my sister and tell her that her wandering brother is saved and is coming home. Just in case something happens to me, I want her to know that Mama’s prayers have been answered. Preacher, would you tell sister, I’m coming home?”  I got her address while assuring him I would.
Three or four years later I received a letter, which was sent to my Pixley address but had been forwarded two or three times. I couldn’t believe it but it was a letter from his sister.
She thanked me for talking to her brother who had gotten home safely. She informed me that her brother was now a preacher who was Assistant Director of a skid-row mission in Oklahoma, Oklahoma City I believe.  I never will forget the pleading tone in his voice, “I want her to know that Mama’s prayers were answered. Preacher, tell sister I’m coming home!”  What a wonderful occupation! What a privilege I have – please write, tell sister I’m coming home.

POINTS TO PONDER

There are a lot of old praying mothers resting in the presence of Jesus. Their prayers and tears are bottled up and are ever before the throne of Grace. The young man didn’t know it but his mother knew of his conversion long before my letter to his sister reached her. The moment he received Christ as his Savior, his name was written in the Lamb’s Book of Life. (Luke 15:10)
My prayer is some wayward son or daughter will read this story and God will cause them to stop rebelling and pray a prayer for mercy and forgiveness. By doing this you will send a message “Mama, I’m coming home” as the angels write your name in the Book of Life.