A Prodigal Daughter

I didn’t have a favorite parable of Jesus until I was 19 years old. I remember sitting on the deck outside, allowing the sun to soak into my skin. I was exhausted. My family had left for the day and I was reveling in the fact that I could be alone and out of doors. I had barely eaten for a week, and hadn’t eaten at all the day before. I had felt sick for a long time, my body racked with trembling, I couldn’t sleep, bad dreams haunting my mind during the night, flashbacks, guilt, and sadness during the day. I had barely left my room, coming out at night when no one was there to draw, or read, or try to pray. But the words felt empty.

The night before, I had curled up on the couch and tried to call God ‘Father’. I stopped. “I feel so unworthy to call you that,” I whispered. “Look at me.”

That’s all I could say out loud, but the thoughts persisted. “Look at my heart. Look at how broken and weak and pathetic and selfish this is….me sitting here right now, pretending I am okay with this, pretending I can go to you, pretending I think praying to you will help when all I really want to do is hide and sleep forever. Why did Christ die for me? I don’t understand. Do you really want to listen when I talk to you? I don’t want me. Why would you want me? Why do you care? Look at me. But don’t. I don’t want anyone to see.”

I hadn’t slept that night. Now it was morning. The sun was shining. I could feel it, warming the edges of my skin, soft, an oblivious sort of comfort, almost human. It felt good. Spring doesn’t stop for the sadness of the world.

I was trying to read.

I was trying to read so I could feel better about myself even though I was exhausted, so I could feel like I wasn’t wasting my time, so I could feel like I was being somewhat productive. I was reading a book by Tim Keller called, The Prodigal God. A theology book. Bonus points. My eyes scanned the pages. I thought I should be feeling something.

“God’s reckless grace is our greatest hope…The prerequisite for receiving the grace of God is to know you need it.”

Yes, yes I knew I needed it. I even knew I had it. So why did I feel this way? What was wrong with me?

“What is so scary about unmerited free grace?”

Terrified of grace. That was something I could understand. Something I could relate to. I held my breath, and fought back the blur in my eyes, focusing for real this time, not just pretending, and for a moment I forgot I was trying to feel again.

“What is so scary about unmerited free grace?

…If I was saved by my good works – then there would be a limit to what God could ask of me or put me through. I would be like a taxpayer with rights. I would have done my duty and now I would deserve a certain quality of life. But if it is really true that I am a sinner saved by sheer grace – at God’s infinite cost – then there’s nothing he cannot ask of me.”

Nothing he cannot ask of me. I get it. I deserve all this. All this death, and pain, and grief, and weariness, and brokenness, and not wanting to get up in the morning, and not being able to sleep at night, and nightmares, and trembling, and flashbacks, and not eating, and eating too much, and exhaustion, and hiding away, and being too known, being too vulnerable, being too hardened, being too weak. I deserve not being able to pray and I deserve not wanting to. I deserve all the bad, broken, things of this world, and none of the good and glorious ones. There’s nothing God could ask of me that would not be giving more than he took, nothing he could make me endure that would be unfair, unwarranted, other than the fact that he could not make me endure enough.

But.

But this pain.

This heaviness. This ache. This numbness.

It sucks.

I closed the book and flipped open my Bible to the parable of the Prodigal Son in Luke chapter 15. I had read it hundreds of times. My eyes scanned the words, searching for some sort of spark, something to make sense of all the darkness, some key to this feeling I hated and yet was so afraid to lose.

The son takes the inheritance, leaves his home, leaves his father, and loses everything. Squandered, shamed, stricken, he comes up with a speech – a plea for mercy – a plea to be treated as a slave.

As Jesus tells the story you can feel the tension of love building, the judgment of the crowd, the inaudible: ‘if that was my son’, the broken: ‘if that was me’. The holding of breath.

“But while he was still a long way off, his father saw him and felt compassion, and ran and embraced him and kissed him.” (v. 20).

The father doesn’t wait. He doesn’t hold back. He doesn’t stand at the door and watch. He runs. But there’s a problem. Rich, dignified, well-born patriarchs, who have servants and fatted calves and long robes and many years to their life do not run. They remain the master of their feelings. They walk with dignity and do not hike up their robes over their knees to run to a beggar.

But Jesus wanted to make it scandalous. Because this was God. And God’s joy over his people, God’s pursuit, the love that fills his heart, is shown by running, by a clinging embrace, by a wet, sobbing kiss, by an ignoring of the plea to be treated as a slave and the shocking command to treat him as a son made alive again. Can you see that embrace without feeling your heart beat a little faster? Without the curling of your stomach? Without a sudden weight? I can’t.

The indignity of the incarnation finds its root in the love of the Father.

And I am the son in Jesus’ story. I can’t imagine it. Why would my Father run to me? Why would his heart fill with joy at the sight of me? Why would he not only be so full of love, but so intensely happy?

__________

John Piper in his book, The Pleasures of God, retold this parable and ended in this passage from Zephaniah 3:17.

“The Lord, your God, is in your midst,

a warrior who gives great victory;

he will rejoice over you with gladness,

he will be quiet in his love;

he will exult over you with loud singing.”

“When the father calls the minstrels to sing at the banquet,” Piper says, “it is he himself that leads the singing, and the song has to do with how glad he is that we are there.”

Piper continues: “Can you feel the wonder of this today – that God is rejoicing over you with loud singing?”

No. I can’t. I am guilty.

But there is now no condemnation, The Lord has taken away the judgments against you, For whoever believes in him is not condemned. (Rom 8:1; Zeph 3:15; John 3:18).

But I can’t. I am pressed in on every side. I can’t do anything right. I am despised, worthless, unloved.

The Lord is a warrior who gives victory…I will deal with your oppressors (says the Lord)…He has cast out your enemies, The Lord is a shelter for the oppressed, a refuge in times of trouble. Give your burdens to the Lord, for he cares for you, A bruised reed he will not break, and a faintly burning wick he will not quench. (Zeph 3:17, 19, 15; Ps 9:10; 1 Pet 5:7; Isa 42:3).

But you don’t understand. I really can’t. God feels far away, and I am so small, so weak, so helpless. I am nothing.

The king of Israel, the Lord, is in your midst…The Lord, your God, is in your midst. The Lord is close to the brokenhearted, and saves those crushed in spirit. (Zeph 3:15,17; Ps 34:17-18).

But I am so full of shame.

I will save the lame and gather the outcast, and I will change their shame into praise and renown in all the earth. I sought the Lord, and he answered me and delivered me from all my fears. Those who look to him are radiant, and their faces shall never be put to shame. You, O Lord, are a shield about me, and my glory, and the lifter of my head. (Zeph 3:19; Ps 34:4-5; Ps 3:3).

Almost. Almost I can feel it. But you don’t know my sin. You don’t know me. Where can someone like me go? Where can I go to be part of the song?

I will leave in the midst of you a people humble and lowly. They shall seek refuge in the name of the Lord. Pour out your heart before him, for God is a refuge. God brought me out into a broad place; he rescued me because he delighted in me. (Zeph 3:12; Ps 62:8; Ps 18:19.

You want to see God run to you? Feel the embrace, feel the love of a Father that knows, knows, knows who you are, who sees your shame, sees your filth, and takes it upon himself? You want to feel the love of the Father made scandalous for your sake?

Admit you are the prodigal. See the swine at your feet, the rags on your body, feel the filth crusting your skin, the brokenness deep in your heart. Beat your hand on your breast and say, “God be merciful to me a sinner”, and see him run.

For in that scandal, is glory.

The Father is glorified when the helpless come to him, when the sinner pleads mercy, when he is exalted as great, and infinite, and full of life, and abundance, and joy, and pleasure, and we come to him to take part in what only he can give. He rejoices in his might to fill our emptiness.

That is the Gospel. You meet all the requirements for prodigal. Christ meets all the requirements for Son.

And the Father runs.

Soli Deo Gloria,