“20And he arose and came to his father. But while he was still a long way off, his father saw him and felt compassion, and ran and embraced him and kissed him.” – Luke 15:20 (ESV)
This verse is from the parable of the prodigal son. You know the one, where the son took his inheritance early, left and squandered it all and then returned to a father who welcomed him back with open, thankful, and excited arms. All of that is great, but I was looking here at this one verse to where I was led this morning.
In that day the men were to be dignified and stoic. They had servants to do for them. Not to mention that once the son had gone with his early inheritance, he was considered dead to the family. So, it was out of custom and convention for a head of household to act in such an open, thankful, excited and revealing way.
As my pastor described for me to get a visual, imagine this father seeing his son in the distance and hiking up his cloak and coverings and sprinting to embrace his son who had been “dead” and was now alive. I am sure that the son was filthy and had a pretty good stench to him as he had been living and working with pigs.
The father was not concerned with the condition of the son and did not listen to the son’s confession or even consider what had transpired. He simply heaped on compassion to him. He forgot and went against all customs and conventions of the day to drench his found son in compassion for he considered himself whole again.
How often is it that we avoid compassion because it is not conventional or customary to give it in our times today. I think of giving forgiveness where it would be customary to condemn. I think of service to those who may not be “deserving” of service. I think of hugging someone instead of hitting them when they do wrong against us. We have to step out of the customary and conventional response to demonstrate compassion and that will disrupt the situation entirely.
What is your reaction when something goes awry? Are you of the action to stick to the response expected? What if you were to discard the customary and conventional responses and deliver compassion instead?
Trevor's Thoughts 