A Very Good Reason

Onesimus had been Philemon's slave but perhaps due to a breach of trust or wrongdoing on the part of Onesismus, he left abandoning his relationship with Philemon.  Onesimus ends up in the company of the great follower of Jesus, Paul who takes him under his wing and leads him in a life-changing experience with Christ.  Paul sends a new Onesimus back to Philemon with a letter urging Philemon to accept his former slave not as a servant but now as a brother in the Lord (Philemon 16) and offering an extraordinary explanation for why things have turned out the way they have:  "Perhaps the reason. . .he was separated from you for a little while was [so] that you might have him back for good . . .[and] better. . ." (Philemon 15).
The story is a familiar one. Jesus told a story of a prodigal (wasteful) son who abandoned his relationship with his family but later returned also transformed.
A friend recently told me the heartbreaking story of how one of her children, a devout follower of Jesus as a child and teen now a young adult, had drifted away from the Lord and the values that had been so much of the formative years and more toward a destructive lifestyle.  As heartbreaking as those stories are, our faith in God lived out in our relationship with Jesus and shaped by the truth of his word, assures us that there might be a very good reason known only to our loving God at the time.  Can we live with that when the time comes?  Only by grace.