Continuing from * Come Home . . . .
On her way to the bus stop she entered a drug store to get one last thing. Pictures. She sat in the photograph booth, closed the curtain, and spent all she could on pictures of herself. With her purse full of small black-and-white photos, she boarded the next bus to Rio de Janeiro.
Maria knew that Christina had no way of earning money. She also knew that her daughter was too stubborn to give up. When pride meets hunger, a human will do things that were before unthinkable. Knowing this, Maria began her search. Bars, hotels, nightclubs, any place with the reputation for street walkers or prostitutes. She went to them all. And at each place she left her picture—taped on a bathroom mirror, tacked to a hotel bulletin board, fastened to a corner phone booth. And on the back of each photo she wrote a note.
It wasn’t too long before both money and photos ran out, and Maria had to go home. The weary mother wept as the bus began its long journey back to her village.
It was a few weeks later that young Christina descended the hotel stairs. Her face was tired. Her brown eyes no longer danced with youth but spoke of pain and fear. Her laughter was broken. Her dream had become a nightmare. A thousand times over she had longed to trade these countless beds for the secure pallet. Yet the little village was, in too many ways, too far away.
As she reached the bottom of the stairs, her eyes noticed a familiar face. She looked again, and there on the lobby mirror was a small picture of her mother. Christina’s eyes burned and her throat tightened as she walked across the room and removed the small photo. Written on the back was this compelling invitation. “Whatever you have done, whatever you have become, it doesn’t matter. Please come home.” She did.
“The Son is the radiance of God’s glory and the exact representation of his being. . . .”1 “Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest.” 2
~ Max Lucado, No Wonder They Call Him the Savior (Nashville, Tennessee: Thomas Nelson, 1986, 2004), 130-131
