What kind of love is this?

What kind of love is this?

My cellphone rang late in the day—it was the Duke of Earl saying he was ‘outta here’… You will remember, he is a Vietnam vet with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, homeless in Long Beach, black, intelligent, and a ‘Jonah’ by his own description. As I guessed, he had stopped taking his meds. Besides not wanting to go on living, he was talking crazy, and spewing venom at me. I started crying, and he hung up on me.

‘Wait!’ I wanted to shout. ‘God has been working in your life, and you know it! You’ve said it yourself—you know that God has called you back to himself, he is blessing you, and now you’re just giving up on him, on life…again?? You
are my bodyguard in Long Beach, and your presence allows me to move and
to minister safely, and without fear!’ I screamed in my head. I wept. I wept for me, for him, and for the Father whose love was being rejected again.

The Father’s love. What kind of love is this? “Behold what manner of love the Father has bestowed upon us, that we should be called the children of God.” (I John 3:1, NKJV) “Christ’s love compels us,” Paul wrote in 2 Corinthians chapter 5. When we deserved judgment, he loved us instead. God gave us the greatest love man has ever known, covering us, so that we might not face conviction on Judgment Day, and he did it through
Christ’s love.

Turning toward the discussion of the love of God, I picked a book from my shelf that had been a gift years ago, The Return of the Prodigal Son – a story of homecoming, by Henri Nouwen. I do not know when a book, author or subject matter has pierced my heart like this one. To say that it was ‘balm for my soul’ would be apt, but so would ‘informative to my thinking’.

The story of the prodigal son is from Luke chapter 15—one of three stories Jesus told to illustrate how much lost people matter to God. All these years—probably at least 42—I have missed what Nouwen brought to my attention. It has truly impacted me, and I pray that it will move you as well.

Sure, I knew the story: the younger son asked his father for his inheritance, which was a total disgrace in the eastern culture of the day. The father gave it to him, along with the freedom to go and do as he would. He squandered all his money on the sinful pleasures of the world. Poor
and starving, he returned home and threw himself on the mercy of his
father—thinking he would be far better off just to be one of his
father’s servants.

From across the horizon, the father sees his lost son coming. He prepares a feast for him, and runs to greet and welcome his boy home.

Meanwhile, the father’s older son looks on with righteous jealousy: ‘I’ve always been faithful, but you have never given me a celebration . . . what
gives?’

Nouwen was moved to write a book on this story after he saw a poster of Rembrandt’s painting, “Prodigal Son”. The colors, expressions, and emotions of the work shouted to Nouwen, who then traveled to the Hermitage in Saint Peterburg, Russia, to spend
hours studying the original, thought to be one of Rembrandt’s last
paintings. His journey into Rembrandt’s life serves to augment the rich messages of the parable.

I have rightly viewed the father’s welcome of his returning son as representative of the Father’s great love for us-----but, I had never
viewed the father in the story as the Heavenly Father. Until
now, I have never drunk into my soul, or carried in my being the
radical, all-encompassing love of God that Nouwen enabled me to glimpse. God’s love “cannot force, constrain, push, or pull. It
offers the freedom to reject that love or to love in return.” (which is
why the father loved the son enough to give him the freedom not to love
him in return, but to take his inheritance, and leave—walk away from
the love of his father) “As Father, he wants his children to be free, free to love. That love includes the possibility of their leaving home, going to a “distant country,” and losing everything. The Father’s heart knows all the pain that will come from that choice, but his love makes him powerless to prevent it.” Until now, I did not recognize the prodigal’s father as God the Father, who loves unconditionally.

Juxtaposed with my deep study into the love of my Father came this situation with the Duke. All I could do is pray for him, and release him again to the care of his own true Father. Praise God, he turned around. And of course, just like the Prodigal’s father, God welcomed the Duke home again. But what kind of love is this, that loves so deeply, and yet offers such freedom
for us to choose to love him or reject him?

God loves you and me enough to let us go . . . even when it hurts him deeply.

Christine