#259. Thinking faith is an event.
May 29th by JonA few months ago, I wanted to have a blog party at my house. I was going to read a few things, my friend Scott was going to play some music and my friend Ben was going to do some delightful things with food.
Then it snowed in Georgia and got canceled.
I wrote a post on my blog announcing the party was off. I thought I would be clever so I mentioned that Barry Manilow had canceled too. If I am being honest, I thought at least a few people would post messages saying how disappointed they were the party was canceled.
I know that’s probably shallow, but I can’t just write about the good bits on my blog and make myself seem more put together than I am. So the truth is that I thought my post about the party being canceled would generate a bunch of emails/comments in the first 24 hours. And I would feel important or missed or something.
I got 1 email in the first 24 hours.
Here is what it said:
Actually Barry didn’t cancel the show last night; the management at Phillips arena did, and it hasn’t been canceled just postponed. Barry’s management is already working on another date for the show to go on.
Instead of readers telling me how cool I am, one “Fanilow” (what Barry Manilow fans call themselves) told me how dumb I am.
I was frustrated at first, but the reality is that the Fanilow helped me see a universal truth that I had forgotten about since I was in college:
We all want to be found.
I don’t care if you’re Christian, Muslim, Jewish, Mormon, Atheist or Agnostic. I think deep down inside, we all want to be found. We all want someone to come looking for us. We want to be missed. We want people to be glad when they are with us, as if they have arrived. As Radiohead once said, “I want you to notice when I’m not around.”
That’s how I was in college. I was dating a girl that didn’t seem that concerned if I was around. So when we went to parties, I would get a little drunk and then hide. By “hide” I really wish I meant “go outside and sit on a curb forlornly like a singer/songwriter waiting for inspiration.” Alas, that is not what I meant. I used to go hide in closets. (If you listen closely you can actually hear readers leaving the site as I write.) I would stand there in the dark of the closet, awkwardly shoved amidst coasts and shoes waiting for her to look for me. Wanting, more than anything those stupid nights, for her to notice I was missing. For her to come find me. I wanted to be found.
I wonder if that is how the Prodigal Son felt when he ran away from the father. I wonder if when he was in the pigpen, when he had come to the end of himself if that is what he wanted more than anything. To be found by the father. To be missed. To be looked for.
I’ve written about this idea before because that story is woefully incomplete in some ways. We don’t get a picture of what happened the day after the welcome home party, which is the subject of a book I am writing. We don’t know anything about a mother or additional family members or specifics like how long the son was gone or if he stayed once he had returned.
But what Luke 15 does reveal is pretty powerful. We are given two images, two distinct pictures of two people at odds with the idea of being lost and found.
In one image, we see the father. Here is what we are told: “But while he (the son) was still a long way off, his father saw him and was filled with compassion for him.”
The father was watching the road. He wasn’t going about his day casually glancing at the road thinking he might see the son but he had some business to attend to. You get the sense that life had ceased on the farm as far as the father was concerned. And he wasn’t alone. He was with servants that eventually ran with him. I like to imagine that the moment the father was told the son was missing he called together his most trusted servants and together they started watching the road. All day, all night, all week, all month, all year.
And then we have the son, stuck in a pigpen, desperately planning his return. And when he was ready, all it says of his journey was “So he got up and went to his father.”
The journey is not what matters in this story. We are not told how long he walks or how far he went or any other detail of the trip. And it’s not that the Bible is not detailed. Read the description of the temple in the Old Testament. It’s exquisite and microscopically detailed.
But here we only get nine words and I think there are only three that really matter. I think we’re supposed to look at “got up” and “went.” That was all he had to do. He stood to his feet and he went. It wasn’t complicated. It wasn’t long. It wasn’t full of do’s and don’ts.
I think that is something we Christians forget that we need to be found. We think it’s already happened. We ascribe events to our faith and say things like, “I became a Christian in the fourth grade” or “I gave my life to Christ last year.” I like the present tense better. I like how words like becoming and being and giving, capture that faith isn’t so much an event as it is an experience. It isn’t so much something you do once, but rather something you do. We need to be found. Not once in a single moment of salvation but daily. Hourly even, we need the God of the universe to come running. To find us. To know us and love us.
I don’t know where you are right now. Maybe you’re found, maybe you’re lost, but regardless, please know that there is a father watching your road. It is all he does. His beard is growing long, his stomach is going empty as he waits by the road for you. He won’t leave. He can’t leave as long as you’re still out there. You need only get up and go and wait for the sound of desperate feet in the distance.
Comments
the “good” son who stays home i believe wants to be found too…here he is never leaving his father…working hard…but his wayward selfish brother gets the big feast….even the found need to be reminded they are loved…i almost think it is harder for the “good” son…..
keri
Good morning, Jon. This post sums up all of human need and its fulfillment in its entirety.
Beautiful.
First off, I love that a “Fanilow” made you feel dumb. They should feel dumb for having that label.
Second. I find the truth of “wanting to be found” an interesting one. As someone who spent 15 years between athiesm and agnosticism, being “found” was not something that was a priority for me. I think that I was TRYING to hide. I found God at the age of 30. Knowing that He had been waiting on the side of the road for me for all of those years is what was so comforting.
As someone who has truned hiding from God into an art, I must say that this is my favorite post I’ve read from you. I love that in the midst of sassmouth and tongue-in-cheek humor you’ve not neglected the ache we all feel in our soul; we ache for the Father.
I’ve often marvled at my own life, when I would say that I definately did not want to be found by Him, He searched for me anyway. But really as I look back at those times I have to wonder if He was hiding with me because I know in my heart of hearts He’s never more than a whisper away. Sometimes, for me, it’s like we’re hiding somewhere together (sometimes me with real hurt or just feeling empty) but I’m ignoring Him. Then, when the hurt consumes me, I can nearly hear Him whisper, “Come on. Let’s get out from under the mess and start over.” And there’s that soul-aching part of me that wants to resist because I’m ashamed because I’ve hidden AGAIN. But He never rubs it in my face, ever. He just holds out His hand and says, “Come on…” And we go on from there.
To say I – we – are loved by God seems so small compared to the reality that God’s love, Prodigal Love, is more than I can fathom.
God bless you, Prodigal Jon.
wow. beautiful post jon. i love your insight into the story of the prodigal son.this is definitely the best post you’ve ever written.
Thank you.
You are annointed to do this, to write and to be real and to speak the words of a Father to a mass of silly blog readers. Keep pluggin’ away at that book. You were meant to write it. You think and speak with authenticity and wisdom.
You mention cockiness and getting a big head frequently – but maybe you are more humble than you think.
Thanks for the honest thoughts, and fulfilling post. It reminds me…I was told humans need two things to be happy–one is to be unconditionally loved. I see that connected to what you wrote about here… Anyways, thanks again.
Jon, thank you. Thank you for letting God use you (but don’t be humble – you’re not that good).
I suspect you’ll get a lot of emails/comments from secret closet-hiders. I used to do the same thing, hide behind a door in a darkened room, just waiting to be found.
And Prodigal Stacy, I loved the way you phrased your thoughts. I need to go mull them over.
This is an awesome follow-on to #253: Painting God Mad. Please know that God is using you in a big way this week.
This was amazing. Maybe it you shorten the name of your church to something like an abbreviation of all of the above, then when you open it, and I can find it on mapquest, I woudl totally come and hear your flow – for is your flow is weekly anything like this, and the post-slide cotton candy is as good as you say it will be, then I am SO there!
A wonderful post. I’m trying to not be offensive here, but sometimes I wonder if this kind of thinking is especially easy to fall into for Protestants because of the idea of being “saved” at a particular time. I’m Eastern Orthodox, and while this post definitely rang true for me as well, I also have the tradition of my church telling me that salvation is a journey, not a moment in time.
Anyway, the tangent my mind took. This is a great post and very helpful for me at the moment.
Salvation is a "both/and" in that it is an event and the process/journey. JMHO…
I’M STILL MAD AT GOD FOR MAKING IT SNOW THAT NIGHT. IT WASN’T EVEN A GOOD SNOW. IT WASN’T A SNOWBALL FIGHT SNOW. IT WASN’T A GO TO THE NEAREST CHURCH PARKING LOT AND DO 180′S SNOW, EITHER. IT JUST SNOWED.
I THINK MAYBE GOD JUST HATES BARRY MANILOW MORE THAN HE LOVES YOU. MAKES SENSE IF YOU THINK ABOUT IT.
This is so good and so true and so open and so honest.
Thank you.
Thank you.
We all want to feel wanted.
We all need to feel needed.
We are the body, but the body withers without care and attention.
We need love.
Thank you.
Jon, people often talk about how your posts bring them to tears. And I certainly see how they can. This post made me teary-eyed … no tear actually fell, but I was almost there. LOL.
I was lost. Wanting to be found by all these people who weren’t even looking for me. But God was. And when I realized that, I came back to him. The one who wanted me all alone. Right now my wife is lost. She left me. And she left God. And in classic Satan form, I’m not sure she realizes it … the left God part. I’m sure she’s well aware that she left me. : ) But anyway, it hurts more than I can explain, but I believe God wants to restore my marriage. And I needed to read this to remember that when she returns, I need to let her know that she was missed and that I was waiting for her all along. And that in God – and God only, she is found.
One of the biggest tricks Satan pulls over us is making us think we can be found everywhere EXCEPT for in God. I’ve been there. I know many who are there now. Thank God that he is persistent and is willing to keep looking for you even when you’re not looking for him.
Loved this post Jon! Especially the last paragraph. Thanks….good work.
Jon, you nailed it exactly! I feel this way a lot. Since you focus on the prodigal son so much, I wonder if you are familiar with a song called “When God Ran”. It was done originally by Benny Hester and then later covered by Shaded Red. Great song.
Thanks, Jon. For many of us, it’s easy to make jokes about our life experiences, but excruciatingly hard to put down our defenses, lay bare our hearts and be vunerable.
When I first came to Christ, I knew I was lost. I had tried everything imaginable to fill up the void in my heart. But nothing filled up that God-shaped hole. Out of options, I surrendered. I fell to the ground and wept. I said to God, “I give up. You’ve got to take control because I just can’t do it anymore.” That was a turning point in my life. I wasn’t baptised for several months after that, but I knew that day, lying on the floor in a heap, that I belonged to Him.
It’s so easy to allow things to creep back into my life that separate me from our Him. I find myself running away again and again. But I’m grateful that each time I run away, the distance is shorter, and He always leaves the porch light on.
As is usually the case, great work here Jon! It is heartwrenching for me to see folks make the profession of faith and then merely bask in the glow of “I’m so going to Heaven now”for years. If we must be born again to enter the Kingdom of Heaven, why don’t we realize that the day we were saved is a birthday. It’s the beginning. We have so many failure to thrive spiritual babies in churches. It’s a continual lostness, due to deliberate ignorance or to flaggrant failure to see that making disciples, not converts, is our Great Commission. Either way, our Father is still watching for us.
On a different note, Stacy in Louisville has so really profound things to say. Stacy, you should seriously consider blogging too.
Awesome post Jon. That’s what makes this site such a delight. You never know if you’re going to get an exposition of faith using GI Joe characters or a fantastic insight like this one. I love Luke 15. It’s one of my very favorite passages. Not just because of the Prodigal Son story, but because of the other two that precede it as well. Jesus was obviously trying to drive home a very important point in this teaching. Whether he always gave all three, one right after another, as is presented in Luke isn’t as important as the fact that he had three parables in his arsenal to make the very same point. It was so important to him that we know just how desperately he wants us with him that he used three different illustrations to drive this home to us. Jesus will always actively seek after us, no matter how far astray we’ve gone, no matter how insignificant we may think we are. Jesus says “You are MINE” and he won’t give us up. That is just the most awesome message to me. Can’t wait to read your book.
whoa. that’s deep and i loved every word of it.
at first when you were talking about hiding in a closet, i was wondering if you were that weird ex-boyfriend of mine from years ago
and then i read on and realized you were talking about ME.
thanks
i needed that.
its sort of funny to me how these really deep posts don’t get as many comments as your more tongue in cheek ones. However, that does not change the fact that so many of us need to hear this. I find myself identifying with both sons in this story, and I pray I never forget that I’m a prodigal found by God. If we deny our prodigality (is that really a word, spell-check says yes)then we miss out on this beautiful picture of The Father watching for us. thanks John, these more serious posts are greatly appreciated.
At this point, all I can say is thank you.
Oh my goodness. You don’t know how much I needed this. God is so amazing. Thank you for allowing Him to speak through you. I am that person who often needs to be found. I know God loves me and has found me but often don’t feel “found” by those around me. I’ve never hid in a closet but I have removed myself from people to see if they’d seek me. To know if they truly cared enough to want me or seek me. Thank you again for the post. It truly meant a lot to me.
Very nice. This has been my experiencing–faith as a process. I think too many people see sin as a slippery slope. They expect that becoming Christian is the final answer. Sin suggests that one’s Christianity is false or imperfect (either one’s own Faith or others’) rather than indicating that one can still grow more in that faith. You offer a good perspective on this!
Thanks Jon – I REALLY needed to read these words!!!!!
~Lisa~
Just wanted to let you know that I also used to hide at parties because I wanted to be found.
wow. we all need to really take this truth and put it in our hearts. so good.