God Waits

 October 17, 2022

This past weekend, I was “Spiritual Director” of a men’s Christian retreat, with responsibilities including eight talks on different topics and texts, one of which was Jesus’ story of the Prodigal Son. 

This story is the culmination of a Trilogy. In the 1st story, a shepherd goes looking for a wandering sheep. It just wandered away, and he searches high and low for it. In the 2nd story, a woman is looking for a lost coin. It is inanimate; it didn’t wander; maybe the thread that held it to her headdress broke. She sweeps the house for it.

Here, there is no searching. Only waiting. It’s the difference between losing your keys and losing your love. Sometimes with people, the more you chase after them, the faster they run away. In this story, the father loves the son, but lets him go. He knows in his heart what is happening, but also knows the son has to have an epiphany that he can’t give him.

I love the way Jesus states it: “He came to himself.” While he was wandering, he didn’t know who he really was. Here’s truth: when you are wandering from the Father, making a mess of your life, that’s not who you really are. Sometimes we say, “He’s just showing his true colors,” or “I’m beyond hope,” or “I’m just a drunk, or a bad husband/father/brother/friend.” That’s not true. You aren’t your true self when you’re in a mess. You’re your true self when you begin to realize you have a home and a father.

You may have prayed for God to deliver you out of your mess, and wondered why it hasn’t happened. “Why doesn’t God answer my prayers,” you ask. The answer may be that if God miraculously took you out of your mess, you would never discover who you really are. Sometimes, God waits for us to figure out for ourselves that we aren’t the disgusting person we  thought we were—the liar, the cheat, the pervert. He waits for us to realize we have a home and a Father who waits for us to discover what even God couldn’t convince us of if he had chased us down.

In the story, the son thinks in terms of what he’s done. The father thinks in terms of who he is. If my relationship with God is based on how well I’ve done, or if it is negated by how badly I’ve done, I don’t have a personal relationship; I have a business relationship, and that never satisfies a longing heart. Our relationship with God must be based on kinship; we are family because God adopted this child who had been abandoned and left to die. I didn’t do anything to deserve God’s love, and I can’t do anything to destroy God’s love. He is my Heavenly Father, and is waiting for me to realize that, and come home.