Meditation Monday

Happy Monday, all!

As Thanksgiving gets closer, we all start to consider the things we are thankful for, the things we say when Grandma passes you the basket of rolls at the table. Thinking of things to be thankful for should be easy, yet we often find ourselves struggling to come up with something worthwhile to say.

To be honest, one of my biggest challenges is loving people who get handed things they don’t even want or appreciate when I have fought to achieve those same things. I believe I deserve them more and so I get angry when those who I find less deserving get them.

I feel like the brother in the parable of the prodigal son in Luke 15. The prodigal son takes his inheritance and runs away to a foreign land, where he blows it all and ends up broke. He is then forced to feed pigs in order keep from starving. Finally, the prodigal son realizes what he left behind - family, food, clothes, a warm bed - and decides to return home. Upon returning home, the prodigal son’s father forgives him and throws him a huge party. However, the prodigal son’s older brother is pretty aggravated by this.

In Luke 15:25-32, it says:

“All this time his older son was out in the field. When the day’s work was done he came in. As he approached the house, he heard the music and dancing. Calling over one of the houseboys, he asked what was going on. He told him, ‘Your brother came home. Your father has ordered a feast—barbecued beef!—because he has him home safe and sound.’ The older brother stalked off in an angry sulk and refused to join in. His father came out and tried to talk to him, but he wouldn’t listen. The son said, ‘Look how many years I’ve stayed here serving you, never giving you one moment of grief, but have you ever thrown a party for me and my friends? Then this son of yours who has thrown away your money on whores shows up and you go all out with a feast!’ His father said, ‘Son, you don’t understand. You’re with me all the time, and everything that is mine is yours—but this is a wonderful time, and we had to celebrate. This brother of yours was dead, and he’s alive! He was lost, and he’s found!’”

Right now, I feel exactly like the older brother - I’ve been dedicated, responsible, done everything I was expected to do - but where’s my party? Where is my time of rejoicing and feasting? I have followed my Father, I have stayed true to my beliefs; I have done all of these things and I feel entitled to a reward or a pat on the back. I want some happiness in my life, I’d like some romantic success. All of these people around me don’t seem to be trying as hard as I am and yet somehow they are blissfully happy. It just doesn’t seem fair.

The problem with this type of thinking is the sense of entitlement at its root. We are imperfect, we screw up. We are definitely not automatically entitled to happiness because we tend to make a mess of things and hurt each other. But still, God loves us despite that. I have no right to judge who is “deserving.” I am a whiny, faulted human. I am undeserving of anything, really. And that is the beauty of grace - loving and forgiving those who are undeserving. In my “me-me-me” all the time perspective, it’s easy to lose sight of grace, it’s easy for me to begin to view grace as a currency and begin to believe that I am more deserving of grace than another child of God. It’s easy for me to start thinking that the harder we work, or the “better” Christians we are, the more grace God should be offering us, because we are somehow owed it now.

The truth is that thinking God should do anything for us is ridiculous in itself - as if the God who gives us the very air we breathe owes us anything. But He chooses to show us grace, to love His faulted creation, because to Him we are all equally beautiful and worthy of love. Just because I may pray more than the next person does not mean I should be entitled to favors from God to show He appreciates how much I’m doing (which is, in all honesty, very little). Just the fact that I am alive and I am generally in good health and my family is safe should already be enough proof of His grace.