Prodigal Love and the Eyes of Faith

by Joey Swofford, one of our elders

The word "prodigal" means lavish, without restraint, or no boundaries. We remember the story about the prodigal son and his lack of self-control and personal restraint (Luke 15). But also in that story, we see a father, who is also prodigal, in a different sense. He was prodigal in his love. He had love with no boundaries, no restraints, no conditions. He had an undonditional love for his undeserving son. Do you realize his love came from an unlimited source? It was God! God is love and He is the same place our love should come from. Our Lord and Savior has this kind of love for us. He is the God of the lost, hurt, and undeserving. He not only welcomes us back home but He comes searching for us when we have gone astray. In Luke 15, we see that our Father looks for us like a shepherd looking for lost sheep, like a woman looking for the lost coin, like a father for his missing son.

God is a loving, searching, giving and forgiving, and restoring father. You may be thinking that you've "sinned away" all the grace you received from God, but please know that you have not. God loves you and will not stop loving you every day of your life. I believe that it is a good time to ask yourself this question: How am I responding to the Lord's love for me? Do I truly believe and accept His grace and understand what that means? It is His gift. Ephesians 2:8-9

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On a slightly different note . . . I sometimes hold Ella in my hands while we look into each other's eyes trying to understand each other. I know I'm trying to do two things: 1) to understand what she is trying to communicate and 2) to communicate my love for her in ways she understands.

In some ways, she is more limited than me with regard to communication. She can smile, let her lip quiver, sigh, squeak, cry out, swing and kick, . . . but she seems to do most of her communication with her eyes. (secondarily, I would say she uses her mouth a lot, too, especially to signal her hunger to me, although sometimes I think she does it just to tell me that her favorite thing to do his feed.)

I can't see what my eyes are sending her, but I imagine they can only tell the truth as far as what is in my inner being. It almost worries me. Don't I believe God is powerfully able and generously giving? What if Ella sees in my eyes that the real truth is that I believe God to be selfish, lacking, and stingy? That He only helps people who help themselves. That He only gives to the ones who deserve it.

I don't believe any of those things--I believe all power, wisdom, and beauty belong to God and that He shares it like there's no tomorrow. But when I look at Ella I wonder what my eyes reveal to her. It makes me wonder whether grace and generosity and faith are welling up inside of me or if it's greed and selfishness and scarcity. There's a song that says, "There's love enough for the taking . . ." I hope that Ella will see that when she looks into my eyes because it's true--there's more than enough love to share and oh, what a joy to share it with her. God knows that she is a gift of love to us and of that generosity we are truly grateful.