Seeking and Waiting

Last Sundays gospel reading talks about the prodigal son who came back home and found himself in the embrace of a loving father. It was a picture of an unconditional love of someone who is waiting for the return of someone loved. There are other two parables within this discourse that also talks about the nature of Gods love. The first, talks about the lost sheep. The shepherd upon knowing that one was lost, he left the 99 to look for the one lost sheep. The other talks about the lost coin wherein upon knowing that out of 10 coins she lost one, she started searching for the lost coin. In both stories both did not rest until they found the lost sheep and coin.

These three parables, all in one chapter of the gospel of Luke, give us a glimpse of the nature of Gods love. In the lost sheep and coin stories, it tells us that Gods love always seek out the lost. He will never rest until we are found. Isn’t it comforting that when we are lost someone is actually looking for us?

In the prodigal son story however, it shows the other nature of His love, a love that waits. The father never gives up on the son. He never loses hope that someday he will come back. We might ask, why is it His love seeks out and yet in another story his love actually just waited?

The first two parables, the lost were not human person but a sheep and a coin. They don’t have the capacity to comprehend as much as a human person does. On the other hand the last story was about a person who has full knowledge of what he was doing. If we are like the sheep or the coin were we don’t fully know well what we are doing, or we don’t fully comprehend that something is leading us astray then God will surely seek us out until we are found. On the other hand if we are like the prodigal son, who willfully squandered the inheritance, knew fully well what he was doing and was in full knowledge of all the bad things he has done, then the Lord who knows that we know, will wait until we come into our senses and return to him.  We can say then, that the response of God can actually defer depending on the posture of the heart of the receiver.

Love is always seeking and waiting. 

by aats