The Best of the Portals of Prayer

Read: Matthew 11:28-30

“And He arose and came to His father.”
Luke 15:20

Father’s Love

Some lives are strewn with lofty resolutions never kept because they were never really meant: mere expressions of a love turned inward upon self. But the young man meant it when he said: “I will arise and go to my father, and I will say … I have sinned … I am no longer worthy to be called your son” [Luke 15:18-19]. This was no mere good intention, thrown as a salve to an aching conscience. Nor was it said as a noble gesture meant to impress others or to salvage his own wrecked self esteem – but to be forgotten as soon as it was spoken. “He arose and came!”
Here, instead was repentance and conversion, faith-moved and sure. Here was a going back, because the going away, was recognized to have been as wrong and ungrateful as it was foolish. Here was a return from a far country, seen at last to be a shameful land, to the health and purity he had left. But, here above all, was a heart of pride and self-love broken by the same gentle and remembered love that alone could ever heal it.
Lent, too, is a time of the aching and breaking heart as we remember the crucified proof of the Father’s love. Let us, too, arise and surely come.
Dear Father, though we may go from Thee, in mercy grant us to come back again, for Jesus’ sake. Amen.

March 07, 1958