Turn away from God and He'll still wait for your return

Turn away from God and He’ll still wait for your return

I believe the parable of the “Lost Son" showed the tireless manner that God is all about describing how much his patience never wanes.  (Lk 15: 11 - 32).  Let’s take this narrative of a father going against the tradition that the Jewish approach places a child’s father in a precarious position.  He doesn’t wait for his son to come to his senses and return on his knees, embarrassed and humiliated for his common choice of an arrogant attitude.  

This story goes beyond the normal explanation of how anyone who is honored and faces his  child or a close relative that turns against this loving father or guardian.  But then how often do any of us consider the pain we may establish when taking what might be ours in the future, and use it for personal pleasure that can only leave signs of anger, frustration, and feelings of resentment that in some cases never begets forgiveness?

Using the Incarnation as an example of how much Almighty God considered his creation of humanity as the most essential move that the divine would humble himself to go beyond the very design that this human species held close to his arrogant thought of going his own way?  By human standards another person who deliberately turns away from a trusting partner becomes an enemy and cannot be trusted.  This was always the scenario of ancient kingdoms and anyone who went against the king’s wishes were usually killed or thrown in prison, maybe for life.  

Of course, God isn’t like the human being’s thought of a one-way justice system.  “You hurt me and I will overlook your insolence by finding you wherever you hide and devise a method to allow you to understand my mercy.”  “I will send my Son who will assume your humanity so that no one may ever tell me I don’t understand this method of forgiveness.”  “He shall take upon himself all the ills that you give each other and then accept a punishment and sentence of death to show how complete my love is for each of you.”

None of my creatures could ever go this route to forgive another person for even the smallest of pain handed to them.  But then, there is only one God, Omniscient and forever Holy.  “I do not hate or even want to see my creatures go down in the face of bad people.  I created them to live with me forever, in eternity.

No sin is too big or too deeply embedded within any human being that God’s love cannot overcome.  Where sin abounds, grace abounds even more.  (Rom 5: 20).    

Ralph B. Hathaway