This morning as I was drinking my morning worship music (LOVE the new Rend Collective album!!!) and driving to work it hit me - like a telephone pole.
1st off...I'm the prodigal who stayed home. I make polished, safe choices. When our family moved down south, I fit in well with the Young Life crowd because my sins weren't obvious. I tried being good...just for the wrong reasons. Even though I knew and trusted from an early age that salvation was mine through Christ's sacrifice, I never knew the weight of what I was saved from until years later I did something on purpose that I knew to be considered "sinful". I was a Christ follower, I led Bible studies on campus, but my love, like the home-bound Prodigal's, was smaller than I thought.
Luke 7:47
"Therefore I tell you, her sins, which are many, are forgiven—for she loved much. But he who is forgiven little, loves little.”
I'm definitely not advocating sinning much so that more grace will abound. But I would say to look deeper at your motives for even the best of your actions. How odd it is that I was blind to the root system of idolatry which had long entangled my heart until the soil of my soul's garden was excavated, tilled, and sifted in the suffering I experienced surrounding the destroying of my marriage covenant. "You shall have no other gods before me" is THE one commandment I've always 'pshaw'ed, like it was an easy A given for just putting our name on the test; and it suddenly became the elephant in the room that is my soul.
At one time or another in our lives we are each of the prodigals. I tend to sin like the one who stayed more often.
Back to my morning drinking and driving: The 'telephone pole' thought that stopped me is that the prodigal who left needed to return to the discipline of the property line; and the prodigal who stayed, probably shouldn't have. His sin was one of not taking the risk of messy relationships. His sin was contempt towards the Father about how his people pleasing ways didn't earn him brownie points. His deception: brownie points = love. The truth is that Love keeps no record of wrongs, nor does Love keep score. (...and Love probably makes gluten free beet and bean brownies that are better for you - but that's for a different kind of blog.)
My discipline, and act of worship, is in leaving:
*leaving my self protected shell,
*leaving polite people pleasing (read door mat) language,
*leaving comfort zones,
*waking up from the American Dream (or nightmare), and
*leaving to help my Father in the trenches to shepherd prodigals back into the fold.
The Great Commandment
34 But when the Pharisees heard that he had silenced the Sadducees, they gathered together. 35 And one of them, a lawyer, asked him a question to test him. 36 “Teacher, which is the great commandment in the Law?” 37 And he said to him, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. 38 This is the great and first commandment. 39 And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. 40 On these two commandments depend all the Law and the Prophets.”
The son who left showed contempt to his Father, breaking the first commandment. The son who remained broke the second. He loved his own good deeds more than his returning brother, more than his Father too. We are all at one time or another each of the two.
I hope that I can continue to grow in my ability to be vulnerable enough to let God examine my heart...in the meantime, I'm committed to being open to and grateful for the benefits of suffering. If suffering only exposes my sinful nature, it's worth far surpasses each pain. More than that, I hope that I can be less fearful of leaving, and more like Frodo and Sam - aware of their mission, but humble and persistent to continue their journey.
"...man's openness to God is brought about by grace, and grace springs from the suffering of God in his faithfulness to isolated man....Closed systems [or people] bar themselves against suffering and self-transformation. They grow rigid and condemn themselves to death. The opening of closed systems [or people] and the breaking down of their isolation and immunization will have to come about through the acceptance of suffering. But the only living beings that are capable of doing this are the ones which display a high degree of vulnerability and capacity for change. They are not merely alive; they can make other things live as well." (Jürgen Moltmann)
P.S. Gotta love a theologian who writes books called the Theology of Hope , has such an incredible come-over, his own trading card (!!) AND uses a REAL typewriter in 2014!) http://moltmanniac.com/a-letter-from-jurgen-moltmann/#more-434
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