Dear Rose Park,
This is the fourth Lenten-letter that will focus on a central story and book. The story is the Parable of the Prodigal Son found in Luke 15. The book is The Prodigal God: Recovering the Heart of the Christian Faith by Tim Keller. As we continue to journey step-in-step with Jesus towards the cross of Calvary, it’s my hope for each and every one of us to recover the heart of our faith in the Risen King.
In the Parable of the Prodigal Son, the younger brother wanders off to a distant land to live a foolish life. At some point, he begins to yearn for home. He remembers the food in his father’s house. He remembers his warm bed. He remembers the comfort and safety of home. Keller writes:
Home exercises a powerful influence over human life. Foreign-born Americans spend billions annually to visit the communities in which they were born. Children who never find a place where they feel they belong carry an incapacity for attachment into their adult lives. Many of us have fond memories of times, people, and places where we felt we were truly home. However, if we ever have an opportunity to get back to the places we remember so fondly, we are usually disappointed. pg. 102
Though ‘home’ can evoke such powerful feelings the reality is often a mirage. We experience this when we spend weeks planning for family gatherings around the holidays or even vacations anticipating that it will be exactly what we need and satisfy all of our desires. Often times, we come back from these gatherings and vacations in need of another vacation because we are left unsatisfied and disappointed. In this sense, Keller wonders if we are all exiles, always traveling, but never arriving.
But if the Parable of the Prodigal Son and the season of Lent teach us anything it’s that we have great hope, because one day God will push back the stone and leap off the porch in order to run down the driveway and embrace us in His heavenly arms and in our heavenly home. Keller concludes this chapter with these words:
Jesus will make the world our perfect home again. We will no longer be living ‘east of Eden,’ always wandering and never arriving. We will come, and the father will meet us and embrace us, and we will be brought into the feast. pg. 117
This is our great hope and it’s the thrust of the Easter message. Out of God’s great love for us, He was willing to sacrifice His own Son in order that we might be able to embrace Him and be brought back into the feast.
Grace & Peace,
Pastor Mark
Photo by David Marcu on Unsplash