The Father

This is the third and final of three posted reflections (a class assignment) regarding my experience as the Younger Son, the Elder Son, and the Father based on a reading of Henri Nouwen's "Return of the Prodigal Son." The post was written specifically in response to the book. For a frame of reference, I would encourage reading the book.

Any references are to this source and page numbers can be found at the bottom. This posts may not be reproduced in anyway, whole or part, without written approval of author as per copyright law. Thank you.

Click here to read some versions of the Story of the Prodigal Son.

Click here to see the Nouwen's book at Amazon.Com.

Click here to see Rembrandt's painting: The Return of the Prodigal Son.

The Father

I am becoming the Father. As I return to my Father’s home, God’s grace and love embraces me so that I can accept the freedom and identity He has for me. Furthermore, He transforms me to become more like Him. Within my humanity, I want to be like the Father, and extend compassion, forgiveness and grace just as He does. Recently, God has revealed to me an expanded perspective regarding the cost of doing this.

This past fall, as I was driving, I conversed with God. As I prayed, He prompted me asking, “Tara, what is it that you really want?” After briefly thinking about it, I answered that I wanted to be like Jesus, to love like Jesus does. The next words that God spoke unveiled my hidden heart to me, “Is that because you think it won’t hurt as much?” I started to weep. Within one moment God revealed a false desire—that if I could love perfectly like Jesus somehow I would be able to love without the risk of hurt or rejection.

In that moment of truth, I answered God back honestly confessing what had been revealed to me. In love, Jesus faced rejection, hurt, and suffering. He risks His heart. My response to God was that I still wanted to be like Jesus, to love like He does, and that I would know Him in His suffering. I pray God gives me the courage. Unfortunately, love involves risk, danger. Risk is one reason why love stories are so compelling. It is how God has captured us with His grace. In loving, we face the risk of rejection. I am not one to back away from risk or danger.

As Nouwen expressed, becoming the Father is a difficult thing to do, because I am still in varying degrees of the sons. My heart is not impenetrable. I have suffered rejection in my friendships. In exploring this, I do not think I have been unwise or foolishly exposed myself to rejection, but have moved within God’s perspective of love. However, my personal impulse is to protect myself at all cost to abandon ‘Fatherhood,’ and simply become a ‘son’ again.

Nouwen suggests that there are three necessary ways to become like the Father: grief, forgiveness, and generosity. These are also three ways I identify with the Father. Similar to the Father, I grieve over this because so many people are neither free to love or receive love. In this condition, they will never know the fullness of God. It is an awful world we live in when people are unable to accept love as God desires through His Son and through other people. So many people are uncertain that they are loved and accepted for themselves, because the hurt they have experienced has left them broken. Myself included at times.

My forgiveness is quickly extended against small offenses, but more difficult to practice against hurtful circumstances or to apply for myself. As I desire to move in God’s unconditional forgiveness, the discipline requires a daily practice of self-surrender. In order to forgive like God, I must be willing to submit myself to God and release a need for justification. My self-seeking heart must seek Him.

Generosity requires the external showing of the internal aspects of grief and forgiveness. I desire to be generous with myself— my love, my friendship, my forgiveness, my service. My arms want to be extended outwards to welcome those who need to experience God’s love. The greatest challenge I face is the impossibility of me accomplishing this myself. God needs to work the consistency of love in my life so that I can truly claim the authority of his compassion in my life. I have to patiently receive what God offers me and dwell in His house so that I can become like Him.

The Elder Son

This is the second of three posted reflections (a class assignment) regarding my experience as the Younger Son, the Elder Son, and the Father based on a reading of Henri Nouwen's "Return of the Prodigal Son." The post was written specifically in response to the book. For a frame of reference, I would encourage reading the book.

Any references are to this source and page numbers can be found at the bottom. This posts may not be reproduced in anyway, whole or part, without written approval of author as per copyright law. Thank you.

Click here to read some versions of the Story of the Prodigal Son.

Click here to see the Nouwen's book at Amazon.Com.

Click here to see Rembrandt's painting: The Return of the Prodigal Son.

The Elder Son

I am the “Elder Son.” At times, my identity is interwoven with the characteristics that so readily possess him. Anger, resentment and envy rush forth when others, more irresponsible, receive rewards that they do not deserve. After all my efforts to be “good, acceptable, likeable, and a worthy example of others,” I am plagued with the question of purpose and impact.[1] Does it really matter and for what purpose. It feels unjust that others receive so freely and easily.

Like the psalmist, I am prone to ask, “Why do the wicked prosper?” However, my question is probably better phrased, “Why don’t I prosper?” In regards to my relationships, I have especially tried to live rightly. Of course, this is where I feel the greatest sting. In the same regards as the Elder Son, I secretly long for significance and love while trying on my own to attain it. A desire for someone to exercise the same care and consideration towards me, which I wholeheartedly attempt to live out towards others. In that vain wish, I live trapped in the darkness of my heart. Just as the Elder Son steamed and brewed his own vain desire into a dark, thick resentment.

Honestly, the resentful burden is not necessarily due to others receiving or even a lack of recognition or rewards. The weight is due primarily to my own over-achieving perfectionism. The work and the dedication of attempting to receive attention, affection and recognition is the bondage of my heart. As I strive to attain these, out of my own self-righteousness I fail to receive them. What I thought would bring me life ushers in greater degrees of death as I attempt to earn what is freely given without my strife. Once again, I find that I have wandered away from the home of God’s heart.

My heart becomes suspect of the love I have not received, because I think that love should look or feel a certain way based on my efforts to attain it. I begin to live in the pathology of darkness: every move requiring a counter-move, every gesture- evaluation, every remark- analysis.[2] As Nouwen expressed, “There is the fear that I am excluded again.” [3] Having experienced exclusion, I fall victim to this fear. I can visualize a spiral of self-rejection, and rejection in my own life. My strife was always to become something better than I was, because who I was did not seem acceptable enough. Out of my own self-rejection it was easy to perceive that others would reject me as well. Thus, it would lead to what I most feared (and still do), further rejection. [4] Rather than my Father’s house, I occasionally dwell in insecurity feeling unaccepted, disliked, and unloved.

My joy stolen by my own resentfulness, I am faced with receiving what I did not deserve: God’s unconditional love, mercy, kindness, and grace. Still prone to the resentfulness of my heart, God works in me, developing a sense of gratitude. I can celebrate with those who have received knowing that does not diminish my identity or the Father’s love for me. I must be willing to receive the love He so readily gives if I want to experience freedom.

In order to be my true self, free to give and receive love, I must let go, surrender and trust God expressing my gratitude as I exercise a challenging, counter-intuitive, leap of faith. “The leap of faith always means loving without expecting to be loved in return, giving without wanting to receive, inviting without hoping to be invited, holding without asking to be held.”[5]

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[1] Nouwen, Henri. The Return of the Prodigal Son. (New York: Doubleday.) 1992; 71.

[2] Ibid, Page 82.

[3] Ibid, Page 73.

[4] Ibid, Page 73.

[5] Ibid, Page 86.