The Better Party

Its been a while since I blogged, but something kind of neat about the story of the prodigal son occured to me this week. For those of you who aren't familiar with it, it goes basically like this:

This son tells his father, “I don't want to wait until you're dead, give me my inheritence now.” The father does, and the son goes far away, and blows the whole thing on “parties and wild living”. He eventually ends up starving, feeding pigs just to make a buck and survive (as pigs were considered unclean in his culture, this was pretty low), and decides to go back to his father's house. When he's on the road back, his father runs out to meet him, invites him back with open arms, and throws him a big party.

Now, what I thought was interesting was that the son had been partying almost non-stop for the last few years – the thing he really would have appreciated about being home was that his father loved him, and wanted him back. Yet, his father still throws him a party – the very thing he'd been looking for, in running away, his father gives him, as an outpouring of his love, on the son's return. And it is that love that makes it all worthwhile – all the fun and popularity he had while doing his own thing disappeared when he ran out of money and couldn't do it anymore, but his father still loved him, even as a penniless, starving refugee.

The father here is a metaphor for God, and we are all the son in this story – we can go off, and chase our own thing, but God is always waiting for us to come back to him, welcomes us with open arms, and has a life waiting that is, in any matter of importance, better than the one we can make for ourselves.