I never really intended for this to be the space where I would share this sort of thing, but I feel somewhat like the prophet Jeremiah that I referenced in the title of this post. I have had a thought in my head for some two months now that I find often times distracting and I need to get it out. This, at the current time, is the only spot I have to share it. If I have enough of these, then maybe I will create another home for them.
A few months ago a friend of mine was sharing some communion comments at church and I wondered to myself, if I was asked, what would I even try and share. What novel idea could I bring that would highlight our communion time? I didn’t have one. A week or so later, I was prompted to revisit a book I hadn’t read in 10 years. It was there that the following message was highlighted. Sometimes, it is not the new message that needs to be shared, but the basic and easily overlooked.
He loves you. It’s as simple as that.
So often in religion, it’s easy to get caught up in the “shoulds”; I should do this, I should want this, I shouldn’t do that. Satan uses theses “shoulds” to drown out the simple message of Jesus Christ, The Father loves you. The message of Jesus is good news and we let it get covered up by the mundane-ness of life and how we think life should be. God loves you now, in this moment for who you are, not for who you think you should be. God, the Father, loves you now, in the brokenness you know, and the brokenness you don’t yet know. He knows your quirks, your bad habits, your struggles and doubts. He loves you, all of you. Are there things he would like to see you do differently? Undoubtedly. But that does not change this one simple truth: He loves you.
Luke 15 tells the parable of the Prodigal Son. As a quick summary if you aren’t familiar, the story revolves around one of the sons of a wealthy man who requests to receive his inheritance in advance and leaves his father’s house. The son proceeds to completely squander the wealth and quickly finds himself with nothing, scraping by feeding pigs who are eating better than he is. The son decides to return to his Father’s house, and beg to be a servant, since he knows servants in his father’s house are treated better than his current circumstances are treating him. He returns to his Father and he is welcomed back not as a servant, but as the son he is, despite previous actions.
But there is a great verse in Luke 15 that I had somewhat skipped over in the number of times I have read this story. Verse 20: “While he [the son} was still a long way off, his father saw him and felt compassion, and ran and embraced him and kissed him.” This is beautiful. The son, in his regret and shame, has worked up an apology he intends to offer to his father with the faint hope his father will show him the slightest mercy and take him back as a servant. This isn’t what happens at all. He doesn’t even get the chance to give it. Instead, out of the love the Father has for his son, He runs to his son and embraces him for the Father has his son back, no apologies. The son offers the apology but it falls on the ears of an overjoyed father holding his son, ready to celebrate the reunion.
This is the illustration that Jesus provides to demonstrate the good news he brings. We have a Father who loves us from a long way off, not because of what we do or don’t do, what we could be or what we aren’t, but because He is who He is. The Father who loves.
There is another son in this story, one who is always by his Father’s side, and one who is not excited about his brother’s return. The Father reassures this brother as well, that his own place has nothing to do with his brother’s return. He has the Father’s love as well. In my youth and arrogance, there was probably a time I saw myself in the shoes of the older brother, knowing I should have compassion on those who find their way back. But as I have grown older and hopefully a little bit wiser, I realize just how far off I really am from the Father, and I’m thankful that He runs to me while I am still a long way off. He loves me.