Praying Our Prodigal-ness

 

As we wind down and wrap up our time with the Prodigal Family, I invite you to reflect on what you gleaned from the last three weeks?  Maybe you can see your story in each of the characters, maybe you have noticed some of the assumptions you brought to this narrative ~ how your family story was inserted into the spaces and blank backstory of this parable.  Maybe you have begun to see that no family is perfect ~ our relationships always put the ‘fun’ in dysfunction.  Maybe you still have so many questions about this parable ~ I do!!  A few weeks ago, I offered that the Parable of the Good Samaritan/Loving Kindness and the Parable of the Prodigal Family are gospels within the gospel.  Only Luke tells these two stories.  But, for me, they both summarize what Jesus is trying to teach and preach about God and human life and the messiness of humanness.  Both these parables can be read and re-read and read again because we will never exhaust or fully explore all that is in-between the words on the page and in the margins ~ how all that meets us in our lives.  We keep bringing our life to these two parables, because they meet us where they are ~ they can disorient us in beautiful (albeit dizzying and frustrating) ways.  They can sing to our souls with new songs we need to hear.  Please don’t leave behind what has been planted and growing in your soul over the last six weeks, continue to water the truths of glancing, glaring, gawking, and gazing at the world.  Continue to ponder how you pass by or stand on the sidelines, how you try to help, and how you are sometimes the one in the ditch!  Continue to ponder with God how you have sought to risk it all in the name of a great adventure or been afraid to take a leap of faith or how you have tried to let a prodigal love be the story you live day-by-day.  May these two parables continue to find ways to be woven into the unfolding story of your life.  May you know healing, hope, shalom, and love this day.  Amen.