The Father Who Runs

I can’t believe Easter has come and gone again. The Good News of the Resurrected Jesus, however, is never gone. It stays with us as the source of our hope in this valley of shadows and tears. As we wrap up the season, I still have a couple of posts left on the subject of Grace as illustrated in the parables found in Luke 15. Today, I want to take another look at the Father in the story of the lost son.

“…he ran to his son, threw his arms around him and kissed him.” 

 Luke 15: 20b

The Father “ran to his son…”

What a wonderful picture. We have probably heard all about how in Middle Eastern cultures men of stature, wealth and high social status don’t run. Running is beneath them under any circumstances. So for the audience of Pharisees and Teachers of the Law the idea of a stately Father running was despicable and unthinkable.

I sort of relate to the unthinkable nature of such idea as well. When I think of my own father, I can honestly say that I don’t remember ever seeing him running. In matters of urgency, he would walk really fast. He would stretch his long legs to cover a mile wide of ground with every step, but that was about it. See, my Father was this imposing figure, larger than life in a sense, not because he was loud and lively, but because he was solid and seemingly unshakable, with an impeccable reputation for integrity and dignity impossible to corrupt. In our little town, my father was a highly respected man. And when he died, the entire town mourned him, giving him a funeral fit for a beloved statesman. So it kind of goes with what we are saying about Middle Eastern customs. After all, my Father was Spanish, and Spain is heavily influenced by the Arab culture.

At any rate, the point is that my Dad didn’t really run. However, there was one thing he always did: he waited for me. He waited for me every afternoon to meet me down the driveway when I came home from school.

Due to high-enrollment, my middle school/high school operated in shifts. Some grades would go in the morning and some others would attend school in the afternoon. From 9th to 12th grade, I attended the afternoon shift. Therefore, I’d come home around 6:00 p.m. At that time, my Dad was back home already from work, so he would sit out in the front porch, in this totally vintage, white and blue metal swing to swing the time away until I came home. I rode on this ridiculous, refrigerator-looking-type of minivan which passed for a school bus. The thing didn’t have the horse power to climb the rather steep driveway in my house, so the driver would just drop me off at the bottom, on the street, and I’ll have to walk up the hilly paved entrance to get home. As soon as my Dad would see the “bus” he’d get up from his swing and start the trek downhill to greet me. We’d meet somewhere below the middle and we’d walk up the driveway together, his arm around my shoulders.

Sigh…

During the last year of his life, my Dad’s ability to move became greatly diminished. Not only didn’t he run, but he couldn’t walk either. He was confined to a wheel chair, which for him was utterly devastating. By then, long gone were the days he’d waited for me sitting out in the front porch to greet me after school. At the time, however, he was, indeed, still waiting. He was dealing with the profound agony of having technically, for all purposes, lost his son…not to death but to a misguided decision on the part of my brother. My Dad waited for his lost son day and night. He longed for him. The pain that such loss brought to my Dad’s soul was unbearable, and it eventually drilled deeper into his heart until there was nothing left. I know, however, if my Dad had gotten the opportunity to see his dream of watching my brother come in the driveway become a reality…he would have stood up from that chair and ran to meet him, defying all odds and breaking every conventions.

The dream never came true. I never saw my Dad run to embrace my brother one last time. But unlike my Father, Our Heavenly Father does come down that steep, long driveway of sinfulness and darkness to meet us and embrace us the second our shadow hits the far end of the road. Grace wins, and the Good Father always welcomes His returning beloved back home with open arms. Not only does He welcomes us back…He runs to meet us, hugs us and kiss us.

Have It Your Way

“But while he was still a long way off, his father saw him and was filled with compassion for him; he ran to his son, threw his arms around him and kissed him.” 
Luke 15: 20

We are used to the idea that we are to wait upon the Lord. Psalms sing about it. Proverbs guide us through this concept. The Prophets show us the wisdom of God’s timing and how it differs from ours. James urges us to apply it in our daily lives. Jesus, in the parable of the lost son, however, tells us about a paradox shift. He tells us about the Father, Our Heavenly Father, as the one who waits.

Double hmmm…

The very fact that the father in the story sees the son “while he was still a long way off” means only one thing: the father was waiting for the son.

Remember that slogan from one of the fast food chains: “Have it your way!”? Considering our world today, our society as a whole makes a collective push so people believe they are entitled to have it their way. No matter what it is or how twisted it may become, we are told everywhere that it is OK to have it our way. In fact, we are convinced that we should accept nothing less but our way. With complete disregard of any negative or adverse consequences to us as well as to the people around us, we set off in pursuit of our way, pushing aside those who oppose us as we chant the trite song of tolerance.

Well, sometimes, as the parable illustrates, God does allow us to have it our way. In our rebellious spirit, we demand to live our lives the way we choose, ignoring God’s Word, warning signs, red flags, admonition and advice. We decide to go against what we know is right, in order to gain the instant pleasure that comes with obtaining the object of our misguided desire. We accept nothing less than what we want, and when we get it, we part ways with the Giver, hoping to never have to face Him again.

We refuse to see the truth, therefore, as the loving Father He is, God knows the only way to make us see is by letting us have it as we want it so we can see with our own eyes. He does it, however, clothed in Mercy, Love and Compassion, and only to show us the error in our ways.

Consider the simple exchange below:

Son: Can I go play outside?

Father: Sure, but please, wear a coat! It’s cold!

Son: No, I don’t want to wear a coat.

Father: You need to wear a coat. You’ll catch a cold!

Son: NO! I don’t want to wear a coat!

Father: Wear a coat! It’s too cold!

Son: NO!

Father: OK, don’t wear a coat…GO!

A few minutes later son comes inside the house and quietly grabs a coat.

Of course, it’s a silly example, but it serves to illustrate how this reality works in so many levels. And it also goes to say that sometimes, we just have to experience it for ourselves. Our stubbornness in thinking we know better often takes us off road into the wilderness, where we lose our way. And although Our Heavenly Father lets us to go there, and He technically doesn’t go looking for us, like in the parable, allowing us to make our mistakes, in the end, He welcomes us back with open arms. He doesn’t only welcome us, but He waits for us, and when He sees us, He runs to us to embrace us. He knows the mistake will take us into a road of discovery, growth and repentance, which will ultimately bring us home again.

May we open our eyes to the Truth and our soul to His Perfect Plan so we would leave behind the desire to have it our way, and accept His path for our lives.

The Father Who Waits

“But while he was still a long way off, his father saw him and was filled with compassion for him; he ran to his son, threw his arms around him and kissed him." Luke 15: 20

I think this is my very favorite passage in Luke 15. I absolutely love the image of God as the Father who waits. He is the Father who never gets his sight off from the window. He is the Father whose ears are constantly tuned into the sound of his son´s footsteps on the ground. How do we know He waits? Well, He is the Father, isn’t He?

As the youngest child in my family, I witnessed my Dad doing a lot of waiting for my brother and sister. By the time I was in middle school, they were both gone off to have their own lives in the big city, about 4 hours away from our hometown. Every holiday they would say they´d come to visit. Every holiday my Dad would wait for them with great anticipation. Many holidays he´d end up disappointed.

He would sit out in the front porch and quietly swing away the hours to try to be the first one to spot my brother or sister´s cars. He would anxiously talk to my Mom, asking her if she thought they´d left yet. That was the pre-cell phone era, so there was no way to communicate with anyone from the road. There was nothing left to do but wait and hope.

Many times night would fall upon him as he waited outside, so he´d come inside and sit in his favorite rocking chair in the Livingroom, eyes constantly on the big picture window just in case the passing headlights might be them. Finally, often late in the night, the sound of a vehicle in the driveway would propel my Dad up from his chair toward the door to be the first one to greet them as they got out of their cars. I always sensed, by the expression of sheer joy in his face, that the very sight of my brother and his family and my sister instantly erased the agony of the wait from my Dad´s heart.

Later, he would wait for me too. As I packed my bags and moved to a whole other country, far, far away, my Father would wait for my yearly visits in anguish and anticipation. His would be the first face I’d see in the ocean of faces at the airport. His would be the last one I’d glanced at in sadness as I went through security to catch my flight back to the States. It wasn’t, however, until I became a parent, that I truly understood the pain and agony my Dad experienced every time he saw me leave.

Life would have it that my Dad spent the last four years of his life waiting for my brother to come back home, but he never did, so my Dad passed from this life to the next without seeing his face one last time. Once again, I witnessed the dagger that cut through his heart as he waited for his long lost son.

Today, I know he continues to wait on the other side of the shore. I picture him sitting in his rocking chair at his eternal dwelling, next to my Mom…waiting for that day when we would too come back home…this time for good.

So is Our Heavenly Father, waiting for our return. He sees us while we are still long way off, heart filled with compassion, filled with love, as He rushes out to meet us. Unlike my Father, however, God knows we will come back to Him, for He directs our steps and He traces our path. Unlike my Father, God’s waiting is purposeful, for He uses it to guide us out of the gutter and to help us grow. Unlike my Father, God’s perfect plan for His children includes a happy reunion in the end.



Tomorrow we will see more about the Father Figure in the story of the lost son, and how the love of our earthly Fathers often points toward the love of our Father above.

The Finder always goes after the lost, because of three main reasons:

1. He LOVES them.

2. He is the only one who knows where to find them.

3. He is the only one who knows how to bring them back.

It’s that simple.

We have seen how Jesus illustrates the immeasurable worth of those who wander off. In the examples found in the parables of Luke 15 we see that the sheep, the coin and the son are invaluable to those who lost them. In reality, the lost are all of us. The Finder is God. And the One who goes after us is Jesus. And every child of God is worth the precious blood of Christ.

In my inadequate comments so far I have shared my feelings about being lost myself and about the potential disaster that would be to lose my sons. However, no matter how much I think my personal experiences relate to what Jesus is talking about in Luke 15, nothing really can compare. For instance, I could lose my sons to the world, and regardless of any super human efforts I may attempt to recover them, I might utterly fail. The truth is I wouldn’t even know where to start looking for them. And even if I could find them, depending on their circumstances, I probably wouldn’t have the power to begin compelling them to return. Jesus is the Only One who can effectively accomplish such rescue mission.

Because of the Lord’s great love we are not consumed,

for his compassions never fail.

They are new every morning;

great is your faithfulness. 

Lamentations 3: 22-23

In the next few posts we will take a close look at The Father whose heart is filled with compassion and how He ran to meet him on the way…and how He celebrated the lost son´s return.

In the meantime, let us remember that He loves us. He knows us. And we are never out of His reach…no matter how lost we think we might be.

Choices

Continuing with the focus on the Finder, I think of my sons again.  Today I think of Dylan.   I can say that I have never lost him. I’ve never left him anywhere. He’s never wandered off. He is never truly too far away from me. Therefore, unless he is at school or something like that, Dylan is usually within my eye-sight. I do, however, worry about losing him in the future. I worry about the choices he’ll make and how those choices will take him to the wrong path. I think about the son in the parable, and I can see Dylan asking us to give him his inheritance so he can squander it … no problem.

As it happens, Dylan, not unlike me, has a hard time seeing the need to be judicious with money. He likes it, but not enough to get too attached to it. He’d rather have the stuff money can buy. So whatever money he gets, doesn’t stay long in his wallet. In other words, he’s always broke…not unlike His Mom. He is also too lazy to work for it…hence the fact he’d think it’s a good idea to just ask for his inheritance now, so he can chill. What he doesn’t know is that whatever inheritance he might get will be gone before he can put his feet up.

Anyway…I worry about Dylan’s future choices.

Take the other day, for example. He agreed to clean the floor for a few bucks. Some might call it bribery. I call it persuasion. After cleaning everything but the last room, he came looking for me to get his payment. I told him to go finish the last room (which I had neglected to tell him he needed to do too). He laid flat on the clean floor and said no. I said, “I know I forgot to tell you to clean that one too, but if you do it, you’ll feel great about a job well done!” His no was unwavering. I said: “well, you have two choices: either you take your money in shame without finishing the job or you go and finish it so you can be proud of your work.” Guess what he chose without hesitation:

“I’ll take my money in shame.”

A couple of days earlier, I was facilitating a class discussion about a book I had assigned my students. The book dealt with the disturbing issue of gangs. As it happens, some of the most violent gangs are Hispanics. Their members are mainly from Mexico and Central American countries like Salvador and Guatemala. Well, as I was showing my class some pictures of the heavily tattooed gang members and talking about how they bare the mark of death on their faces, it hit me. Behind each young face I saw Dylan’s. I had a hard time finishing the discussion because the reality is that if Dylan had stayed in Guatemala, at his age, he would have probably been already recruited by a gang.

I have to say that when Dylan pronounced that he’d rather take the money in shame, I burst out laughing. However, as I saw my son lying on the floor unashamed of his choice…the images of the gang members came to my mind and I shuddered. The pain of the possibility of having this precious child lost to a life of darkness and violence was too terrifying to entertain.



I’m not sure what my sons’ lives would be like when they grow up. But I know for sure that if they wander off the wrong path, I would be chasing them until I find them…even if I know that sometimes that search is futile. Only Our Heavenly Father can effectively bring them back.

The Lost Son

Last time we talked about losing sheep, coins and toys. Today, we will talk about the mother of all losses…a lost child.

Let me start by saying that I’m not very fond of hearing people say things like: “well, you don’t understand what it is to be ___________, because you’ve never _____________” (fill in the blanks with unsurmountable feat of your choice). I mean, I might have never gone without my daily portion of chocolate, but I have a good imagination and I can easily empathize with someone in such tremendously dire circumstance! (Just kidding…sort of)

However, there are a couple of things I have to agree are difficult to fully comprehend when you have not “been there.” Parenting is one of those. It is easy to judge bad parents. I mean really, any idiot can see that you are not supposed to feed your child Happy Meals? Right? Nothing that is not organically grown by small family farmers who cultivate the ground the way people did in the seventeenth century should ever enter a child’s mouth. Well, of course! You don’t need to be a parent to know that. Therefore, anyone who sees a parent at a drive-through line has the right to shame him/her for being so irresponsible (because only people without children should be at the drive-through line getting their fix).

My point is, and I do have a point, that it is very difficult to understand the perils of parenthood when you don’t have children. It is very difficult to understand how incredibly hard it is to juggle work outside the home, with laundry, dusting, moping, cleaning toilets, grocery shopping, chauffeuring people around, figuring out what’s wrong with the dog’s ear, tending to hurting extremities (except your own), homework, learning disabilities, bad grades, teen angst, topped with marriage and the fact that dinner has to be served every single night…if you don’t have kids.

Therefore, it is easy not to understand that sometimes there are just some moments when you just need drive-through.

However, there is another thing that is difficult to understand when you don’t have kids: the immensity of the love that you feel for that child, regardless of how he/she drives you absolutely crazy and is personally responsible for each gray hair in your head.

That is why the very thought of losing one is completely unbearable. That is why Jesus used the lost son as the ultimate illustration of what goes on in the Kingdom of Heavens when one is lost.

Other than trying to lose them on purpose when I need a break, the closest I’ve ever come to losing one of my sons for real was a few years ago when we first visited Disney World. We were exhausted after days of walking and riding, so we decided to treat ourselves to a nice, sit down dinner one night. We were at Magic Kingdom and we were ready to go so we could see the parade with the floats and the lights. I had Dylan on my lap and I reached for my bag when, “where’s Grant?” “What?” “Grant! Where is he?” Still from our seats, we looked around the restaurant, nothing. We got up and continued to survey the place, nothing. We walked around the tables, nothing. I felt my heart pumping faster and my intake of air became troubled. “Where’s that kid?” We asked the young hostess, nothing. Finally, we stepped outside the restaurant, nothing. “My kid…my VERY clueless 8-year old…my son is lost in that sea of people at night in Magic Kingdom.” I tightened my grip on Dylan’s hand as a myriad of scary thoughts began piling up in my mind. I couldn’t breathe.

Helpless we walked back inside the restaurant ready to ask where we could file a missing-child report, when we see him. I couldn’t speak. We rushed to him. We hugged him. Dan yielded at him. Dylan cried. I slapped myself (not really, but I wanted to because I still couldn’t get a grip). “I was in the bathroom,” Grant finally said confused about the commotion. To this day, he insists on the fact that he apparently did tell us he was going to the bathroom and we even replied with an “OK.” To this day we have never admitted to him that he could be entirely right about that, but we were just so exhausted and distracted that we might have, perhaps, answered “OK” without having really heard a word he said. To this day it is still entirely his fault that we almost died of fear. To this day I still remember the panic of thinking him lost.

It’s a silly comparison, really…but even so, the illustration stands: losing a child is probably the worst thing a person could experience. That’s only but a fraction of the kind of agony God feels when one of His children wanders off the wrong path. So much so that He, Himself became One among us so He could rescue us…so He could pay for our ransom with His blood.

Finders Keepers

The last few posts have focused on a look at the lost. We’ve meditated on those who have lost their way and on the importance of not harshly and quickly reverting to judging them for we are but one misstep away from walking right into their shoes ourselves. Today, we are going to turn our eyes to the other character in these stories: The Finder.

Then Jesus told them this parable: “Suppose one of you has a hundred sheep and loses one of them. Doesn’t he leave the ninety-nine in the open country and go after the lost sheep until he finds it? And when he finds it, he joyfully puts it on his shoulders and goes home. Luke 15: 3-6

“Or suppose a woman has ten silver coins[a] and loses one. Doesn’t she light a lamp, sweep the house and search carefully until she finds it? Luke 15: 8

In both of these parables, Jesus tells us how the Owners have lost something…something extremely precious…something extremely valuable. For what is the Shepherd without His sheep? And what is a lone woman without her livelihood? Inevitably, the owners in the stories don’t think twice about abandoning all else in search of what they have lost. It means that much.

Very unlike that, when what we lose is not that important, our desire to get off our behind to go looking for it is severely diminished. Take my son Dylan, for example, most of his possessions have been given to him, meaning, they have cost him nothing, hence, they are worth nothing to him other than the pleasure they bring him while he is enjoying them. Therefore, when one of such things is lost, he doesn’t care much. I have to push him into actually making a decent effort to find it. Yeah, whatever…I’ll get to it later after my show is over…

In the meantime, I am frantically sweeping the house looking for the darn thing…why? Because to me it IS valuable…I PAID FOR IT!

Well…

Imagine how Christ feels every time we choose to walk away from His loving arms. He paid for it…He paid it all…but to us…

Sigh…

Just like Dylan forgets or doesn’t stop to think about how much that toy, shoe or gadget cost me, we often also forget that even though Grace is a gift, it is not free. It costs the precious blood of The Perfect Lam. I guess the thing is that, like ungrateful children, we take it for granted. We don’t appreciate the gift, let alone the price Jesus paid so we can have it. Therefore, it is all too easy for us to just walk away one day and lose our path. Jesus, however, can’t stand it. He can’t just keep launching merrily while we wander off. He goes after us immediately…He goes after us, searching and sweeping all around until He finds us.

Praise be to Him, Our Heavenly Finder, the Giver of Life, the One Who Ransoms us with His blood.