A Father’s Love

In the Bible, there is a beautiful story about the depth of a father’s love. Jesus tells of a young man who becomes restless at home, and decides to demand that his father give him his inheritance early. The father does so, sadly, and the youth leaves to go on a wild adventure out of the country. Once out from under his father’s roof, the young man quickly spends his entire inheritance partying, soliciting prostitutes, and just plain poor money management. He suddenly finds himself hungry, penniless, and alone.

In desperation he is driven to seek menial work looking after pigs, under a new employer.  He is still so hungry that he longs to eat the pigs’ scraps.  The past, his father’s love, and the well fed servants in his home –all come sweeping into his mind.  He had never appreciated the comforts and conveniences he so freely enjoyed then.  How foolishly he had placed love of money and fleeting pleasures that bring nothing but sorrow and pain, above all that was truly precious!  “Ah! Woe is me!” he bitterly cries and laments over what he had lost!  This prodigal son then realizes that even all of his father’s hired hands eat better than he is in this foreign country. There was only one thing he had to do-if he were even to live!  He would go crawling back to his father and beg to be hired on as a servant.

However, looking at the other side of the picture-his father?  What was he thinking and feeling about the ingratitude and arrogant demands and departure of his younger son. A father’s love is always reaching out to his son, longing for his return!  He felt no anger –only an anxiety on the well-being of his son. So we find the father, always looking towards the road by which his son had left, hoping against hope that he would glimpse his son returning one day! So when the son decides to go back to his father, the prodigal never dared to think in his wildest dreams that his dear father has been waiting for his lost son all this time. As the son is walking back on his father’s property, the father sees him from far away, and goes running out to hug him and welcome him back joyfully. The father is so happy in fact that he throws a grand party in his son’s honor.

Let me conclude with the challenges this story brings to us today:

First and foremost, through this story, Jesus is trying to explain the overwhelming love of our heavenly Father- who loves and loves and forgives.  We may have gone away into the ‘far country’ of self-centred, even riotous living.  We may be deep in sinful pleasures that have sucked our very life from us -so much so, that even our friends have abandoned us. But remember…repent..and return to God and ask His forgiveness.  He will put your past behind Him, eagerly take you into His heart and shower you again with His measureless love and a new life which will be full of purpose and meaning!

Finally, as a human father, how much does your life reflect such love? Even if you have, are you perhaps grieving for a prodigal son or daughter who is rebellious, and not walking in the way that is good for him?  Are you angry and bitter or are you willing to keep loving and forgiving him-if he changes his ways-or even if he does not? Such love alone will bring him to his senses one day, and back to you – a love that will not let him go!.

Juliet Thomas