Anyone that knows me knows that I emphasize relationships and how our calling as disciples of Jesus Christ is to live life on life with each other. Recently I have been spending an inordinate amount of time considering my relationships with people that I do life with. I have found that in this transient space called Wilmington, we see that relationships come and start quickly at times and end quickly at times. I have promised myself that I will not be a person that becomes cold and indifferent to new relationships because of the transient nature of Wilmington. So I have invested myself into relationships so as to live as disciples of Jesus Christ.
While at Mepkin Abbey recently, I had in my mind this notion that relationships end and that relationships begin. Because of this time of contemplation I began thinking about how this was the experience of the father in Luke 15.11-32. In this passage we are introduced to the youngest son that left his father. The youngest son decided to go and travel to a distant country and squander the inheritance that his father gave to him. When the father reflected on what happened to their relationship he said in Luke 15.24 that this son of his was dead.
No one wants to welcome the death of a relationship, and I am positive that the father spent a great deal of energy trying to convince the youngest son to not go and squander all of his inheritance; nevertheless the son still did that. This notion of voicing that the relationship was dead is acknowledging what is reality for the father. It is looking at what is reality and choosing to acknowledge reality. The father acknowledges that reality and chooses to continue his life that he is living with the oldest son.
I have learned from this parable that I have a heart that is able to be broken, I have a heart that is vulnerable to relationships that God brings into my life. A heart that can be broken is the only way that I know to be a minister of the Gospel, for it is in this vulnerability that I can understand what Jesus must have suffered on the cross when almost all of his friends had abandoned him. I have learned that a cold and calculating heart is the opposite of God’s heart, and that is why we learn about God’s heart breaking for the people that were in slavery in Egypt.
In a posture of humility I acknowledge that there are relationships that begin and there are relationships that end. As we journey through this world let us all never lose sight that we are to welcome these relationships as people of peace in this world. In my next blog post I want to shift from this notion of identifying what is reality to a way of looking at the need we find in the story of the prodigal son.