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