Prodigal

Recently, one of the youth that I love and care about deeply had a rift with family, which caused this person to move out suddenly. Of course, this action cause a lot of feelings of hurt, anger, betrayal, and other expected emotions from the family and loved ones. This struck deep at my heart for two reasons: first, God has been increasingly softening my heart towards my youth lately, allowing more sorrow and weeping over sin and less anger, and my heart breaks with love for the pain of this child and the family. Second, however, I just finished listening to a sermon about covenant by Mark Driscoll from Mars Hill Church in Seattle. His quote about covenant got me thinking heavily on this issue:

"Who has absolutely betrayed you? And how did you respond? What did you feel? What did you say? What did you do? I want you to go there with me emotionally, because we often absolutely neglect to look at life from God's position. You see, we have betrayed Him! You know the story of Genesis, you've heard it many times, how God created the heavens and the earth, how God carefully prepared the earth for you and I to live on, that God created our first parents in His image and likeness, that God blessed them, that God spoke to them, that God honored them, that He gave them tremendous freedom, that He cultivated a Garden for them, and said they could eat from any tree except one, they were naked without shame, he brought them together and gave them marriage that they could have intimacy and relations and love and joy, and then our parents and every single one of us since absolutely, completely and utterly betrayed God! We disrespected Him, we disregarded Him, we disobeyed Him, we dishonored Him, and we all do. The betrayal that God has endured is worse that any betrayal that anyone else will ever endure. Put yourself in the position of God: if you had done all this good, and then were betrayed, sinned against, how would you respond? What is amazing is how God responds. Most of the time with you and I it's either fight or flight: we're gonna get revenge if we've been betrayed, or we're gonna distance ourselves so that we can't get hurt again. God instead draws near to deal with sin, and He offers us relationship, and the word the Bible uses to describe how God responds to our sin is covenant."

What a beautiful thought about how God responds to the sin of His children. Even in the story of the prodigal son, when the father has been so deeply hurt and betrayed by his son, when the son comes home, how does the father respond? Not with anger. Not with demands. Not with frustration. With running and love and open arms. He tells the servants, "Quick! Bring the best robe and put it on him. Put a ring on his finger and sandals on his feet. Bring the fattened calf and kill it. Let's have a feast and celebrate. For this son of mine was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is found." What a great image of our Father God, not sitting and waiting for us to come near, but running quickly, arms open, robes flapping, anxious to be reunited with His child. Martin Luther said that this is the defining characteristic of the love of God: compassion. Let us thank God for His love, and dwell in His compassion this week!