More late night thinking. It’s 1:22AM Christmas Eve, I suppose Christmas now. Waiting on Santa, wondering if he’s going to make it up to Lawrenceville tonight. Atlanta traffic surely is unpredictable. Boy I sure hope he didn’t take 285.
Tonight I thought about the story from the bible about the Prodigal Son, one that church folks would be very very familiar with. The summarize the parable, a son take a bunch of his dad’s money and goes out and wastes his life on the world, only to return home to a great celebration thrown in his honor - to welcome him home. The father runs to him, embraces him and he stumbles home, and restores his purity and honor. It is such a beautiful story and a picture of a deep love on display. I want to be able to give and receive that level of love at some point in my life. I think we’re all on a journey to that place. If you want to be.
When I would hear the story of the prodigal son used in a church message or illustration, it always seemed to be portrayed as a metaphor for a singular big moment in our lives, when we come to our senses, come home and party in the father’s house for the rest of our days. The conversation seemed to center around just one moment in a persons life where they suddenly experience the love of God and are able to turn the entire ship of their lives around 180 degrees in the other direction. And then I wondered why grace was such a difficult thing for me to ever grasp. It always seemed that, based on my actions, I was either still out wasting my life or inside the father’s party as if nothing ever happened… and I never really knew which it was.
I was thinking tonight that while the metaphor is used most often as an illustration of massive revelation or a definitive turning point in the life of whoever would identify as the “prodigal son,” I realize that I go through this process like 5 or 6 times a year. I’m going through it right now. And sometimes I feel crazy and sometimes I wonder if I’m really “in this club” because of all the stuff that’s buried underneath here… everything I’m tempted to do or think, or ways that I just don’t understand God, myself and the world around me - but something about this story has brought me peace and hope. What if being a prodigal son doesn’t necessarily mean you hit rock bottom once when you were a teenager and everything from that point on was an easy decision to stay in the father’s house? I know it hasn’t been that for me. I’ve run back to the father’s arms a ton of times. Sometimes for big mistakes and a lot of times for all the tiny mishaps that happen along the road of life. I’ve been at the father’s party and left early to go to a human party (literally and figuratively), then came back the next day wondering if the father’s party was still rockin.
I felt like writing this because at 1:42AM now on Christmas Eve of 2019, I just needed to remind myself to take the pressure off to have only had one big prodigal son experience - that this journey of becoming like, knowing, and ultimately loving Jesus is truly a journey with many seasons. And maybe this parable actually encompasses our entire human journey as a whole, as well as very specific turning points in our lives. We are fickle creatures, saying and believing one this and doing the exact opposite, sometimes within the same day or even the same hour. And sometimes we find something good but in our brokenness still need to go out there and test that light against the darkness. That’s how I feel sometimes anyway. But, in a beautiful way, up til this day in my life… the light has always won, and that’s just one more beautiful thing to me about God.
The prodigal son might be more about a process than a moment. It’s more about coming to the end of yourself in a thousand little ways than becoming perfect overnight. To anyone who feels like a perpetual prodigal, this is a beautiful place to be, I think. It means you’re still being changed.
Merry Christmas everyone.
AB