God’s Helpless Love – being THERE for us

I was surprised this morning to discover in this story of the Prodigal Son an answer to the biggest question of faith: the absence of God in the presence of evil. Even yesterday, I thought of the story as being about the foolish and forgiven son, the loving and forgiving father. But I did not anticipate finding the helplessness of God.

Please do this. Look around the place where you are, take mental note of your surroundings.  Now close your eyes, and when they are closed, consider: it all still there, what you saw? 

A few years ago stuck in a long checkout line I was reading the day’s Scripture on my palm pilot. The man standing in front of me asked what I was reading. When I told him, he said, “I only believe in what I see.” I put one of my hands where he could see it, and then put it behind my back, and asked him, “Do you not believe my hand is there?” “Smart guy” he said, and turned around again, shaking his head. I hoped that he was having a theological conversation with himself.

Now back to our Good Story. Imagine yourself a bystander. What kind of father would let his son go off and blow his inheritance? What kind of father would just stand by as his son starves, going from job to job, living in rags? Where the hell is that kid’s father? For three years in a row, I was invited to do a project with the nearby Jesuit High School, helping the parents with their seniors graduating and going away to college. I asked all of the guys to answer two questions, and I shared the results with the parents. “If you were all open and honest, what would you like to say to your parents before you go; what would you like your parents to say to you?” Every year, one of the things they most wanted to say to their parents was, literally, “Thanks for being there for me.” It wasn’t until the third year that the pain of this struck me, right in the middle of my sharing it with the parents. They said being there for me, not here. They were glad we were where they could get to us, but didn’t want us in their faces. They wanted to close their eyes to us, but know we would be there when they opened them.
The parents had asked me to do this because they felt helpless in the face of their sons’ freedom. They knew that they needed to let their sons lead their own lives, but their heats were troubled.  We go our own ways, don’t we? You and I, I mean. But the bigger “we”, neighborhoods, nations, civilizations; we go our way, too, seeking our own maturity, expressing our independence. What kind of God would let one tribe be slaughtered by another? What kind of God would just stand by as a generation of urban youth becomes illiterate and disempowered?  Look to this story. This is the kind of God. He waits on the hill, watching….

When you closed your eyes a minute ago, you could still remember your surroundings; you could describe out loud what was out there, beyond your eyelids. The longer you kept your eyes closed, the more of that you would forget. Perhaps this is what Lent is about – recalling that the God who created us free, and that includes free to walk away, remains where we left him, watching for us there on the highest hill, watching for us to appear as the tiniest speck in the farthest distance, so that he can run to meet us.
A. A.Milne knew this struggle for us to remember that the person from whom we separate ourselves creates in us a fear that they might disappear. On the page under the photo above is this text, appropriate to children of all ages – you and me.

Piglet sidled up to Pooh from behind. "Pooh!" he whispered.

"Yes, Piglet?"

"Nothing," said Piglet, taking Pooh's paw. "I just wanted to be sure of you."

Perhaps Lent is our call to re-turn, to turn back, while on the closed eyelids of our heart we can still recall God’s love. And perhaps there is an urgency, to open our eyes before we forget that they are closed, forget where we are, forget our surroundings, and begin to deny that they are there.  Perhaps it is time to recall the security and peace in walking hand in hand.


 FreeLemonadeStand by John J. Daniels is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.