'I don't want to go to church anymore', declared my fifteen year old son, as he looked at me defiantly from his bed. We, of course, had known many fine Christians whose children had turned their back on their parents' faith. We had witnessed the pain, the tears, and the longings as they hoped and prayed that their prodigals would return. Yet for my wife and I this was now taking things to a different level.
To be honest I had to wrestle with my own emotions; a sense of rejection, even failure that quickly welled up into anger as I tried to reason with him. We took time out; my wife and I prayed and talked together. We came to the decision that, just like the father in the story of the prodigal, we could let our son go. We would not force him to attend church, although we did ask him to come with us on major family occasions and at the significant Christian festivals. We reasoned that God does not force or compel us, and that we should extend the same dignity to our son.
For years we were not sure if we had made the right decision. It didn't appear to have had a negative effect on his younger siblings, yet as time went by he drifted further away. I thank God that our love and relationship remained strong, but talk about church and faith were all strictly off limits. If we attempted to raise the subject, the barriers would go up. The hardest part, though, was when he went away to University. He threw himself into student life, got a job in a pub, and was living a very different life to the way in which he had been brought up. All we could do was keep praying, hoping and loving. Whatever he did, whatever happened, he was still our son and we would always go on loving him, whilst still wondering if we had made the right call in not insisting he stayed at church, while we could influence him.
After graduating, our son got a job in Edinburgh, moved into a flat there and got on with his life. The exact details are too personal to share here, but suffice it to say that one Hogmanay, about a year or so after he graduated, at a low point in his life, he cried out to God; his prayer was immediately answered via a text message received just after the Bells. To receive a text message at that time was a miracle in itself as most of the networks were jammed due to the volume of traffic. Our prodigal had returned and is today on the leadership of his church.
As I write this I am deeply conscious of two things. Firstly, there are many parents, too many, for whom their prodigal has not returned and secondly, my experience pales into insignificance compared to that of the father of the prodigal in Luke 15. His rejection was far greater as he faced the double shame of having his son sell his portion of his inheritance, the family land. Whilst at the same time, by asking for something that would be his when his father died, he was in effect saying, 'Dad, I wish you were dead!' Yet that father never gave up hope, he kept looking, wanting, longing and loving. Even that, though, pales into insignificance compared to the love that God has for his children. We have a Father in heaven that is always waiting, wanting, longing for his children to return.
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