Loved by the Father

When the prodigal son realized that He was loved anyway...regardless...despite how he had chosen to live...unconditionally....unreservedly...it surely must have been a moment of overwhelming gratitude.  More than just wasting his father's money, he had drug his father's honorable name through the mud and mire of degradation.  When people known to his father saw how far he had fallen, they either looked away in embarrassment for the father, or shook their heads in sorrow that their friend had such a son.    

It is not hard to imagine one of the father's friends saying to him, "If he were my son, I would let him go."  Of course, knowing the father as we do through the parable, we can well imagine him responding, "If he were your son, I would let him go, too, but he is not your son; he is my son."   I am grateful that the Father God has looked my way from time to time when it seemed even to me that He should cut me loose only to hear Him say, "I will not let him go, He is one of mine."  What a gift of grace it is to be loved by God.  

He loves as we are. He loves into who we are becoming.  His love has nothing to do with how we show our love for Him.  He loves us.  It is no wonder that so many of us rejoice in that word Paul wrote to  the church at Rome, "For I am convinced that neither death, nor life...nor things to come, nor powers..nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord."  (Romans 8:38-39).  "Lord, does that include my sins?  Surely, my sins, Lord, surely my sins..."..........."No, my son, not even your sins...not even yours."