This Sunday we’re starting a 3-week teaching series based on Jesus’ story in Luke 15 about a father and his two sons, often called the Parable of the Prodigal Son. The younger brother couldn’t stand his father and wanted to get as far away from him as he could. The older brother couldn’t stand his father either but continued serving him anyway, just to get the inheritance when dad died.
Over the years, I’ve discovered I have similar feelings toward my heavenly father:
- I don’t like his expectations. He says I’m supposed to love my wife “as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her” (Ephesians 5:25). That means I need to do lots of dishes, change lots of dirty diapers, and offer lots of foot-rubs. I don’t like that.
- I don’t like his definition of “good.” He says he’s working “all things together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose” (Romans 8:28). If that’s true, then his idea of “good” includes cranky two-year-olds who wake me up all night screaming every half hour. It includes colds, stomach flu’s, and dislocated ribs that always hit me at exactly the wrong time. I don’t like that.
- I don’t like his unresponsiveness. Here’s how one guy said it: “Why are you sleeping, O Lord? Rouse yourself! Do not reject us forever! Why do you hide your face?” (Psalm 44:23-24). Exactly how I feel sometimes. When I’m praying desperately at 3am for the cranky two-year-old to go to sleep, it seems like God is sleeping just fine, because he sure doesn’t seem to be in a hurry to do anything. I don’t like that.
- I don’t like his blessings. At least not when they go to people who don’t deserve them. He “makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and on the unjust” (Matthew 5:45). Don’t I deserve a little more sun and a little more rain than other people? After all, I’m serving him 50 or 60 hours a week. God says no, and I don’t like that.
I’m a younger brother and an older brother all rolled into one. “Father, I have sinned against heaven and before you” (Luke 15:21).
Praise God for the undeserved grace he’s poured out on me anyway: “Bring quickly the best robe, and put it on him, and put a ring on his hand, and shoes on his feet. And bring the fattened calf and kill it, and let us eat and celebrate. For this my son was dead, and is alive again; he was lost, and is found” (Luke 15:22-24).