Lost in Love
Wherever you have been, whatever you have done, whoever you have become … God's love wants you home.
For being one of the most significant realities - if not the most significant reality - in our lives, love isn’t easy. Love isn’t easy to define. Somebody loves sauerkraut, somebody else loves her cat, somebody else loves his grandchild. What’s the difference? Love isn’t easy to understand. It can seem like an emotion but is it always supposed to feel warm and fuzzy? Love isn’t easy to express. He wants to say “I love you” to his wife so he tells her how gorgeous she looks but all she really hears is “Hey, hot babe, you turn me on,” when actually she’d know he loves her if he’d help with the dishes and fix the squeak in the car she’s been hinting about and say thank you when she irons his shirts. Love isn’t easy.
So if it’s difficult for us to define, understand, and express love among each other, how much more difficult is it to define, understand, and express the superhuman love of a God whom we can’t totally comprehend to begin with? Thankfully, our God says “I love you” in many different ways in the Bible, his love letter to people. Jesus tells us a parable - an earthly story with a heavenly meaning - that we might better appreciate God’s love. The parable centers on three characters: two sons who lost their way, and a father who loved them enough that no matter where they had gone, what they had done, or who they had become he would find them.
The first son wanted it all. He asked for his inheritance unusually early, then split to a distant country and wasted it on wild living before returning home with his head hanging in shame. We’ve met him before. We see in ourselves a desire to go our own way and not God’s way. We despair over our stubborn stupidity. The second son is the dutiful one. He didn’t run away, but stayed behind and worked double duty because his brother had bolted. When the first son returns and is welcomed by his loving father, the second son explodes in irritation that he isn’t appreciated. We’ve met him before. We’re the dutiful ones, loyal to friends and family, and we resent it when people who behave badly get what is good instead of what they deserve.
We can learn a lot about love from this parable of the lost sons.
How do you define love? A father whose wayward son has wasted a hard earned inheritance watches the horizon, hoping for his son to come home. How do you understand love? A father whose son’s foolish and rude demands should have burned anger deep into the father’s soul being filled with compassion for him - filled, with no room for revenge. How do you express love? A father whose son has run away now running to his son, hiking up his cloak and impolitely exposing his aging and aching legs. But he doesn’t care about manners now, he cares about letting out his love, becoming lost in the moment of his son’s return, and embracing him with unrestrained joy.
Child of God, wherever you have been, whatever you have done, whoever you have become, God’s love wants you home. In your regret confess the sorrow of your failed self love and, more than that, enjoy the gladness of God’s generous love who sacrificed his own Son for you. “He who did not spare his own Son, but gave him up for us all - how will he not also, along with him, graciously give us all things” (Romans 8:32)? If God gave up his very own Son, isn’t his love generous enough that he won’t ever give up on you? If God searches for straying followers like a faithful shepherd, isn’t his love determined enough to find you anywhere and rescue you from any trouble? If God rejoices over one sinner who repents like a woman who finds her lost coin, isn’t his love always glad to claim you as his own?
“My son,” the father in the parable reassures the second son who dutifully stayed, “you are always with me, and everything I have is yours.” Did you hear your heavenly Father say, “I love you” in these words without any conditions? He does not say, “If you’re good enough,” or “If you give enough,” or “If you go to church enough,” or “If you don’t make mistakes.” Instead he promises certainties with words like “always” and “everything” because the gladness of God’s love depends on God, not on us - as much as the sparkle of a diamond depends on the skills of the diamond cutter, not on the woman who wears it! You don’t need to earn God’s availability, because you are always with God. He has made it that way by claiming you as his own in baptism. You don’t need to work for God’s gifts, because everything he has is yours. He has made it that way by giving you every spiritual blessing through his Son, Jesus Christ. You can now love others without condition or concern for self. Which special person in your life is a bit distant right now? Find them with this seeking and certain love that has found you.
PRAYER: Bring me home, loving Father, by the open arms of your love. Push away from me any selfish love that hurts my relationships, and let every one of my decisions and actions flow from your unqualified love. Thank you for loving me when I’m unlovable. Now I ask that you grant me the faith and will to do the same for others. Remember today those who have strayed from you, who hopelessly wander with the assumption that they may never return. Find them through your loving promises, forgive them for the sake of your dear Son, and bring them home. Amen.