But while he was still far off, his father saw him and was filled with compassion; he ran and put his arms around him and kissed him. Luke 15: 20

So, so much can be said, has been said and will continue to be said about the story of the Prodigal Son. This brief story says in a paragraph or two what volumes and volumes of texts and hours and hours of sermons throughout centuries have tried say about God. What more can a small blog like this contribute?

I will offer an interpretation given by the late Tim Keller. The word “prodigal” means reckless. Of course, the Prodigal Son was about as reckless one can be. He essentially asks that his father to get on and die already so that he can obtain his inheritance. He then goes off into the world, self-assured and confident, maybe well-educated and certainly well-funded, ready to take it all on. He quickly gets into all kinds of trouble and loses everything. With just a little imagination we can fill in the details of his disastrous journey, one that lands him envying pigs and their pods, in a wretched state of painful regret.

So the son was clearly prodigal. Tim, however, finds the father to be just as prodigal, and perhaps more so. When the son realizes he needs to go back and beg his father’s forgiveness, before he can take a few steps, the father sees him from afar and beats him to it. He runs to his son and embraces and kisses him. His son tries to apologize; the father is already planning the Homecoming Party. (The second part of this story – the part about the brother’s reaction to this – will be reflected on in a separate post.)

The father loves his son truly recklessly – without planning, without conditions, without care or calculation. This illustrates God’s love for us, which is part of Jesus’ point. In the face of inevitable disappointment and heartbreak, in spite of the sometimes seemingly small “return on investment,” regardless of its risk or cost or whether it is returned, God pursues us patiently and persistently and without hesitation, even when we don’t love him back, indeed even when we reject him. Hence the title of Tim’s book, The Prodigal God.

The image we have of God as Father – as Parent – is so powerful because it hits home so deeply, especially for parents who, in our own admittedly imperfect ways, pursue our children in love. They grow and they change and they become too cool for us and they discover things about the world and they move away and think we don’t know this or that. And yet we persist in our love of them, even past their dependent childhoods, long after they can stand on their own. Parents can perhaps reflect on this.

I have heard it said that God is more of a verb than a noun. God’s love – or maybe it is simply God or love – continually flows, and we are invited into that flow, to both receive and give it. Parenting embodies this flow and there are of course many other such embodiments. We should try to hold this in our hearts in our journeys.