The Prodigal Son

God's love is constant. Constant as in E=mc^2 constant. That's pretty constant.


During IVLI, I was reminded that no matter what I do, God still loves me--loves me with a deep, all-consuming love. No matter how broken I am, he still died to save me. Jeremy Camp put it this way:
Nothing I can do, nothing I can say
Can make you love me more, your love remains the same
You gave it all for me, you gladly took my place
To rid myself of all, all my guilt and shame

I've soaked that in.

Then, I heard someone talk on the story of the prodigal son yesterday. The son runs away and does all this hideously awful things, and the father welcomes him back still. And the details of this are amazing. But something that I'm left chewing on is the role of the older brother. The older brother is all pissed off that he's done everything right and he never got a celebration like the one his good-for-nothing brother is getting. He speaks to his father in rude, disrespectful tones. Yet his father still speaks to him gently, addresses him "My son". And he reiterates that everything he has is his. --The son is rude and DOESN'T GET IT but the father NEVER TAKES AN IOTA away from what he has given his son! It's not like the father's giving is conditional upon whether the son "gets it". Everything the father owns is the son's, period.
Additionally, the fact that the older brother did everything right, as far as he knew, is equally as key to this story as the younger brother's foolishness. NEITHER ONE OF THE SONS ACTIONS affected the love of the father. NEITHER. The father didn't care that his eldest hadn't done the stupid things his brother had. All that the father cared about was the fact that he was his son. So just because I don't do the "bad" things, the things "sinners" do, the "litmus tests of faith"(ie, getting drunk on a regular basis, sleeping around, etc) (because I screw up too. Just not necessarily in those ways.)doesn't make him love me any more than he loves the prostitutes and tax collectors. They are my brothers and sisters.