Jeremiah 29:12-14
“‘Then you will call upon me and come and pray to me, and I will listen to you.  You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart.  I will be found by you,’ declares the Lord, ‘and will bring you back from captivity.  I will gather you from all the nations and places where I have banished you…and will bring you back to the place from which I carried you into exile.’”

Luke 15:15-20a
“So he went and hired himself out to a citizen of that country, who sent him to his fields to feed pigs.  He longed to fill his stomach with the pods that the pigs were eating, but no one gave him anything.  When he came to his senses, he said, ‘How many of my father’s hired men have food to spare, and here I am starving to death!  I will set out and go back to my father and say to him: Father, I have sinned against heaven and against you.  I am no longer worthy to be called your son; make me like one of your hired men.  So he got up and went to his father.”

Lamentations 3:19-23
“I remember my affliction and my wandering, the bitterness and the gall.  I well remember them, and my soul is downcast within me.  Yet this I call to mind and therefore I have hope: Because of the Lord’s great love we are not consumed, for his compassions never fail.  They are new every morning, great is your faithfulness.”

God our Father who seeks and saves, you do not abandon the children your heart treasures.

In our wandering we stumble across your far-reaching love.  The further our exile, the closer we find you.

Call us home when we kneel in the desolate places.  Turn us from our empty rebellion.

For the sake of Jesus Christ, displaced from his Father’s home to seek us in captivity, have mercy on us we pray.

Listen to ‘Come Thou Fount of Every Blessing’ by Ordinary Time