On Prodigals

The Moving Finger writes, and having writ

Moves on, nor all thy Piety nor Wit

Shall lure it back to cancel half a line

Nor all they tears wash out a word of it.

 

-Omar Khayyam, trans. E. Fitzgerald

 

It befalls me to announce that my childhood friend, whom we’ll call Barbie, has come back to the Fold. In the years since high school, while I have gone on trying to do good, she squandered her teenage years in blonde ponytails and string bikinis making out with Orange County boys in a series of never-ending bars, going from one forbidden fruit to the next. God rewarded her binge-drinking, rebellion, and dishonor to His name by bringing her to Himself, and in the last year she has become a rather unstoppable force of Christlike Love & Peace, AMEN.

It seems selfish to follow up the theatrical astonishment of this story with a complaint, but I have a rather grievous one and it is this: Barbie's miraculous salvation was followed fairly immediately by any number of astonishing rewards. Everybody accepted her back with immediate and total forgiveness; they trusted her; she acquired an incredible boyfriend (who is the next Hudson Taylor I suppose) and who has oodles of charm, handsomeness and money to go around; she gained sudden relief from several physical quirks making her as beautiful outside as she is becoming within; and on top of that she got a new job, four vacations, sixteen or so maid-of-honor gigs, and God. I have been struggling to rejoice with her, even as I fellowship with her, but this week in Church I somehow stumbled upon Luke 15 and was rather amazed to read about me:

 

And he answered his father, "See how these many years I have served you faithfully,

and never in all of this time have I ever dishonored you or violated any of your wishes,

and yet never have you given me a calf so that I can make merry with my friends,

but as soon as your son comes back, who has squandered your money on

prostitutes, you have thrown him a party and given him your best."

And his father said, "Oh, son. You are always with me, and all that I have will

be yours. It is appropriate that we should celebrate your brother's homecoming;

be glad, because your brother was dead and now he is alive; he was lost, and now he is found."

 

The Bible never says what happened or how the brother responded. How do you respond, when your dad says that the thing your brother missed most was quality family time? I know that staying is not the same as coming back. I know that. But how should I react when Barbie lost mostly fellowship with God? It is the cry of my heart some afternoons -- like this one -- Why, God? Why do you let her disrespect her family and you, burn her bridges, give into sin, stray, and mock You, only to reward her with the restored friendships, the spectacular boyfriend, the eager converts? I am struggling to rejoice with her. I am trying to invest, to choose to be glad for her, and I am.

But I do so wonder what the older son did. How did he enjoy that calf and that supper?