The Heart of God

I was going through a little packet of writing samples that is circulating around our office right now, and this one in particular really touched me. It's from the book The Return of the Prodigal Son: A Story of Homecoming by Henri J. M. Nouwen, and he makes reference to this beautiful painting by Rembrandt.
(In case you'd like to read the scriptural account of the story he's talking about, here it is.)

“In Rembrandt’s painting, the elder son simply observes. It is difficult to imagine what is going on in his heart. Just as with the parable, so also with the painting, I am left with the question: How will he respond to the invitation to join the celebration?

“There is no doubt—in the parable or the painting—about the father’s heart. His heart goes out to both of his sons; he loves them both; he hopes to see them together as brothers around the same table; he wants them to experience that, different as they are, they belong to the same household and are children of the same father.

“As I let all of this sink in, I see how the story of the father and his lost sons powerfully affirms that it was not I who chose God, but God who first chose me. This is the great mystery of our faith. We did not choose God, God chooses us. From all eternity we are hidden ‘in the shadow of God’s hand’ and ‘engraved on his palm.’ Before any human being touches us, God ‘forms us in secret’ and 'textures us’ in the depth of the earth, and before any human being decides about us, God ‘knits us together in our mother’s womb.’ God loves us before any human person can show love to us. He loves us with a ‘first’ love, an unlimited, unconditional love, wants us to be his beloved children, and tells us to become as loving as himself.

“For most of my life I have struggled to find God, to know God, to love God. I have tried hard to follow the guidelines of the spiritual life—pray always, work for others, read the Scriptures—and to avoid the many temptations to dissipate myself. I have failed many times but always tried again, even when I was close to despair.

“Now I wonder whether I have sufficiently realized that during all this time God has been trying to find me, to know me, and to love me. The question is not ‘How am I to find God?’ but ‘How am I to let myself be found by him?’ The question is not ‘How am I to know God?’ but ‘How am I to let myself be known by God?’ And finally, the question is not ‘How am I to love God?’ but ‘How am I to let myself be loved by God?’ God is looking into the distance for me, trying to find me, and longing to bring me home. In all three parables which Jesus tells in response to the question of why he eats with sinners, he puts the emphasis of God’s initiative. God is the shepherd who goes looking for his lost sheep. God is the woman who lights a lamp, sweeps out the house, and searches everywhere for her lost coin until she has found it. God is the father who watches and waits for his children, runs out to meet them, embraces them, pleads with them, begs and urges them to come home.

“It might sound strange, but God wants to find me as much as, if not more than, I want to find God. Yes, God needs me as much as I need God. God is not the patriarch who stays home, doesn’t move, and expects his children to come to him, apologize for their aberrant behavior, beg for forgiveness, and promise to do better. To the contrary, he leaves the house, ignoring his dignity by running toward them, pays no heed to apologies and promises of change, and brings them to the table richly prepared for them.

“I am beginning now to see how radically the character of my spiritual journey will change when I no longer think of God as hiding out and making it as difficult as possible for me to find him, but, instead, as the one who is looking for me while I am doing the hiding. When I look through God’s eyes at my lost self and discover God’s joy at my coming home, then my life may become less anguished and more trusting.

“Wouldn’t it be good to increase God’s joy by letting God find me and carry me home and celebrate my return with the angels? Wouldn’t it be wonderful to make God smile by giving God the chance to find me and love me lavishly? Questions like these raise a real issue: that of my own self-concept. Can I accept that I am worth looking for? Do I believe that there is a real desire in God to simply be with me?

“Here lies the core of my spiritual struggle: the struggle against self-rejection, self-contempt, and self-loathing. It is a very fierce battle because the world and its demons conspire to make me think about myself as worthless, useless, and negligible. Many consumerist economies stay afloat by manipulating the low self-esteem of their consumers and by creating spiritual expectations through material means. As long as I am kept ‘small,’ I can easily be seduced to buy things, meet people, or go places that promise a radical change in self-concept even though they are totally incapable of bringing this about. But every time I allow myself to be thus manipulated or seduced, I will have still more reasons for putting myself down and seeing myself as the unwanted child.”

Don’t you just love that? I can so relate to him in having that view of God sometimes: up there on His throne, one ear half-turned away from me until I shape up and turn again to Him. So wrong. His hands are always extended out to us. Always! But being that we're human and [hopefully] fighting that daily uphill battle to overcome tendencies of the natural man and temptations of the devil, odds are we mess up a lot, further distancing ourselves from Him. And yet, “For all this . . . his hand is stretched out still.” Jacob reminds us “how merciful is our God unto us, for he remembereth [us] . . . and he stretches forth his hands unto [us] all the day long.” I think of the father of the prodigal son, imagine him going outside every day to see if today would be the day his son came back to him. I think of his joy in knowing that his son finally came to himself and realized that, regardless of the appeal of the world, the greatest happiness he’d know would be with his father. I just love that connection we can make between this story and of ourselves making that painful, mistake-and-temptation-ridden journey back to our Heavenly Father. “When I look through God’s eyes at my lost self and discover God’s joy at my coming home, then my life may become less anguished and more trusting.”

(Other images of the prodigal son:)

The God of hope

Oh, hey. Sorry I'm negligent of my blog. It is what it is, though. What can you do.

This past weekend we had stake and regional conference, and I wanted to share some thoughts that stemmed from one particular talk. One of the counselors in our stake presidency talked about a trial in his life and the "what do I need to learn about me?"-genre questions which followed that certain event (or as he kept saying, in the third person, "What does John need to learn about John?").

He talked a lot about Abraham, one of my favorite characters in the scriptures. My sister and I talk often about how his "qualifying trial" is an example of what we must all face in this life. We will all have really hard, soul-stretching, life-altering trials come our way, and there will come a point where we'll have to ask ourselves, "How far can I go? How long will I remain faithful? How much will I trust in the Lord?" I used to get to hung up on why I had to go through certain trials when Heavenly Father knew that I was willing to be faithful through them. Wasn't it enough that He knew my heart and knew that I would remain faithful to Him no matter what? But there are lessons to be learned—lessons about ourselves—in those qualifying trials, maybe the biggest of which is hope and trust in our Heavenly Father.

Back to Abraham. So here was a guy who, right from the very first thing we read about him, had some pretty sweet promises from the Lord. He was promised land, titles, posterity, and just wonderful, wonderful blessings. The most poignant one to me, however, is the promise given to him and his wife, Sarah, of a child. This promised blessing was something that was just impossible. It just was. The scriptures say "Sarai was barren; she had no child" (Gen. 11:30). And Abraham himself was freaking old: "Abraham and Sarah were old and well stricken in age; and it ceased to be with Sarah after the manner of women" (Gen. 18:11). For him it was maybe just bad odds; for her it was impossible.

But, man, his faith! "Being not weak in faith, [Abraham] considered not his own body now dead, when he was about an hundred years old, neither yet the deadness of Sara's womb: He staggered not at the promise of God through unbelief; but was strong in faith, giving glory to God; And being fully persuaded that, what he had promised, he was able also to perform" (Romans 4:19–21). He didn't doubt that Sarah could carry a baby in a womb that was "dead"! That just blows my mind. He just didn't even doubt that the Lord would fulfill all His promises. He knew that the Lord "was able."

But not all of those promised blessings came soon. They had to wait, like, their entire lives for some of them, and even longer for others! And then, when that promised, impossible blessing of a son finally came, Abraham was asked to sacrifice it. Like, again, impossible. But Abraham, I think, had already learned something about Abraham. He had learned that he trusted God. More than that, "Abraham believed God, and it was counted unto him for righteousness" (Rom. 4:3). He held fast to those promises and he knew without a doubt that they would be fulfilled. He had hope: "the confident expectation of and longing for the promised blessings of righteousness" (Guide to the Scriptures, "Hope"). Have we, through our qualifying trials, learned to trust God? Do we believe the God of hope?

As this counselor in the stake presidency pointed out, Abraham is our great example of hope; of holding fast to promises. He "against hope believed in hope" (Rom. 4:18) because, through his waiting on blessings, he had developed faith and trust in Heavenly Father and knew that He was faithful. I also love how that attitude rubbed off on his wife, who was skeptical at first (is that just a woman thing? Doubting that God can do the impossible in our lives?) but ended up receiving "strength to conceive seed, and was delivered of a child when she was past age (when it was impossible!), because she judged him faithful who had promised" (Hebrews 11:11). I guess Sarah learned something about Sarah, too. She was strong when she believed.

I guess all of this is just to say that Abraham was awesome. And God IS AWESOME. His promises are great and they are sure. He will fulfill them all in His time and in His way. And He can do impossible things. And thank goodness for Abraham's example of hoping and trusting in God and believing Him. Because we saw how it all unfolded for him, and, I think, if we can try to be as faithful throughout our trials as Abraham was throughout his, then not only will we learn what we need to about ourselves (hopefully that we have more trust and faith and hope in the Lord than we thought) but also we will see things unfold with that same fullness as they did for Abraham.

So here's to hope. Here's to trusting in Heavenly Father's oh-so-sure promises and believing Him when He says He is able.

P.S. I made this little sign for my office of a scripture that someone mentioned in our work devotional last week. I thought it went right along with this!