Saturday, June 16, 2018
Run daddy, run

Luke 15:20
And he arose and came to his father. But when he was still a great way off, his father saw him and had compassion, and ran and fell on his neck and kissed him.

My father died at 96 years of age in 2017. I had no relationship with him for most of my life but, with some effort, I ‘found’ him in 2007 sometime after my mother died.  Prior to that, I could have counted on my fingers the times we had met over more than four decades. However, with all the things I learned in that time I was determined to develop a relationship with him with whatever time we had left.

He lived very far away and a journey to the city required a boat ride down one river, and road trip and the crossing of another river and then another road trip to my home. I would have him come and spend a weekend every so often. This was going quite well, we went out for meals, we ate around the table at home, and we went for drives, visited friends, went to church and went shopping. My son took a great liking to him.

Then one Fathers’ Day Weekend things went very badly. On his trips to visit we would pack his bags with as many things as he could carry to take better care of himself where he lived and where he wanted to stay. And so, as we prepared for our Father’s Day together, he in his 80s and I in my 40s, we got him many gifts of the things he often said he wanted.

Early Sunday morning, when breakfast was ready, we called my father downstairs to give him his gifts, he was overwhelmed when he saw that not only did he get a lot of stuff from me and my wife and our son, but he got the things he wanted most. Within a moment there were tears in his eyes and he said that in the more than sixty years that he has had children this was the first time that he had ever received a gift on Fathers’ Day.

I was livid! For me, this was the first time in the more than forty years of my life that I was able to give my father a Fathers’ Day gift and I had as much right to tears as he, so he had no right to try to make me feel guilty. I exploded and shut him down with a loud thump on the dining table. So loud I can still hear it now while writing this.

This parable that Jesus told, recorded in Luke 15:11-32, is well known as the story of the prodigal son. The story is very familiar even to those persons who have no interest in the bible or Christian faith. Apart from its use in church, it has been featured in popular music, literature and art for centuries.

Some propose that the purpose of this story was to let sinners know that if they would turn from profligate living and come to Jesus He would wash their sins away and God would accept them into His Kingdom. Others propose that the purpose of this story was to criticize the Jews, who, like the older brother, were upset that the Gentile sinners were now being welcomed into the Kingdom of God through Jesus. Still, others propose that this story was about the father whose love for his son was beyond the son’s own reckless actions.

It would seem that this story was about all three of them, and there are many lessons to be drawn. However, today our focus is on the father. This father had endured dishonour from his little boy who, rather than stay within the secure boundaries of his estate where there were protection and provisions, sought to explore the world beyond by total disconnection.

But there is something here that we learn quickly about the father. The father seems to have been heartbroken by his son’s actions. When the boy asked for his shares of the inheritance we have no record of him trying to persuade him to stay, but it seems that he looked for him every day. The record shows that while the boy was still in the distance, his daddy saw him coming, recognised him, and daddy started running towards him.

Sometimes daddy has to start running. When daddy runs it shows love and compassion and it provides a safe place for the wayward child to find love and hope again. It provides a place for the turning for the hearts, “he will turn the hearts of the fathers to the children, and the hearts of the children to their fathers,” Malachi 4:6. It’s the father’s heart that must be turned first.

And so back to me and my father. I shut down an emotional moment before it got too emotional. I missed it. I missed the turning of the hearts. I often reflect on that moment. It was not possible for me to let the emotions run freely because, having not been exposed to them I was either afraid of them, or embarrassed by them, or something else by them. I learned since, and we had a very good relationship for 10 years before he died.

You see, I thought I was running to him because I had gone out and found him, but in that Father’s Day moment he saw me and was running to me. Never mind the history, he was running to me.

Think on these things:

1. Are you estranged from your father and are you looking for a father’s love and compassion?
2. If you are a father, are you providing a place of love and hope that your children could always come back to, regardless of why they leave?
3. How is your church helping those who are looking for a father’s love find it in God?

Prayer focus:

Let us pray today that those fathers in our family and our church who need to run to their children would get up and start running now.

In His Grace
Pastor Alex