Utter Amazement

When the prodigal son returned home it was only after a hard and difficult journey.  It is impossible for us to know the miles between home and the distant country.  Maybe it was a hundred miles, or maybe it was just across town.  The difficulty of the journey was not in the way it put blisters on his feet, but the load he carried.  Few things are harder to bear than the unknown response of someone who is either going to send you down the road, or tell you your room in the house is just as you left it.  

The steps we take toward asking someone to forgive us are some of the hardest steps we take.   The prodigal had practiced his speech to his father.  He knew what he would say and it said it only after his father had taken him in his arms and kissed him.  Such a spontaneous and unconditional response of compassion no doubt made the words he had prepared to speak harder than he could have ever imagined.  No doubt the father and the son wet each other's faces with those homecoming tears. What a surprise it must have been for the prodigal to hear his father calling to the servants to kill the fatted calf that they might have a celebration.  

It is a moment shared by many of  us and a moment which will be shared by many more.  No matter how far we wake up away from the Father who loves us, we find that He is looking for us.  No matter how undeserving we know we are, He is there to receive us, to forgive us, and to love us.  He is not one to chase us, or shame us, or tell us we should have known better, but One who is always eager to see that moment when we turn to look His way once again.  It is the kind of story which fits that moment when we first turned to Jesus.  Imagine for a moment, if possible, the utter amazement we will know in the final moment when He stands just inside the last darkness to take us in His arms, not for a moment, but for all of eternity.