"Like God's Family" (Part 5)

Jesus continued: "There was a man who had two sons. The younger one said to his father, 'Father, give me my share of the estate.' So he divided his property between them. Not long after that, the younger son got together all he had, set off for a distant country and there squandered his wealth in wild living. After he had spent everything, there was a severe famine in that whole country, and he began to be in need. 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.” (Luke 15:11-12 NIV).

As we come to the next section of the parable the curtain falls on the first act of this little drama and we see something that can be very helpful to us in our families. In the first act, the father exercised calm wisdom at the son’s request; in the second act we see forgiveness in action.

A great deal has happened between the leaving of the young son and this point in our story. To set the story for you, I can imagine the father standing at the crest of the hill, where he has gone every evening since his son left. He stands there and waits until he can no longer see because of the darkness. However, on this particular night he sees something on the horizon. He strains to see clearly, something catches his eye. He’s not sure at first, but then he realizes that it is no stranger as has been the case so many times before. He runs to meet his son and opens his arms to welcome him home. The son has a little speech he’s been rehearsing over and over in his mind since he began his journey home. Every bend in the road he’s rehearsed it: how wrong he was, how he didn’t deserve to be his father’s son anymore, how he just wanted to be a servant in his father’s house. His father met him in the road, they embrace, and the boy begins his little speech, “Father…” and the father puts his hand over his mouth and says, “Son, you don’t have to tell me anything, not where you’ve been, or what you’ve done. I know. The important thing now is that you’re home.”

He takes him home and the curtain falls on the second act of this drama. NOW WATCH THIS… DON’T MISS IT! We learn something very important about the love of God from this scene. When we come back to God, he doesn’t ask us where we’ve been or what we’ve done. He doesn’t demand an accounting of the way we’ve spent our money. He just puts his arms around us and welcomes us home. He forgives us. And, isn’t that just what we want and need? It is what all of us want and need, including our children. This is the example of God’s methodology of parenting and family life. I wonder how many families have been destroyed simply because we have not followed God’s example of grace and forgiveness. Tomorrow we’ll get more specific about these principles of forgiveness. Today, is there some member of your family that has become as a stranger to you simply because you cold not, or would not extend grace and forgiveness? Maybe it’s time to take another step toward making your family like God’s family.