Two Brothers

I was talking to the Lord one day, and to be perfectly honest, I was whining. I was trying not to, but it didn’t work. I had a lot of things on my mind: situations that needed to change, people I cared about facing challenges, things that needed to change and I couldn’t see a solution. It was all swirling around inside my head.

He listened politely for a few minutes as I struggled vainly to bring some order to my thoughts and to actually come boldly before his throne of grace, then he interrupted me.

So as we walked, he began to teach me about the parable that we call The Prodigal Son. He just referred to it as The Two Brothers.

This is going to sound stupid and I already know it: I was yet again surprised by how well he knows the Bible. The depth of insight he has into his Word is overwhelming sometimes. And he communicates it better than I do.

Since we already know the story, I’m going to skim past a lot of the preliminary stuff:

The younger son didn’t understand who he was to his father, so he took what he could get, pretty much rebelled against his father and his father’s ways, distancing himself from Father as he runs off to find himself and his own way. When he came to his senses, he has the sense to repent, and his dad re-affirms him in four ways during his welcome home.

“But the father said to his servants, ‘Bring out the best robe and put it on him, and put a ring on his hand and sandals on his feet. And bring the fatted calf here and kill it, and let us eat and be merry;”

1. A robe represents righteousness, so Dad is forgiving the boy. The first thing the son is reminded of is that he really is forgiven. It’s easy to miss that, and the boy didn’t even consider it an alternative with Dad.
2. A ring speaks of authority: the son has authority within Dad’s realm. Again it’s contrary to his expectations that he is not a servant himself
3. The son came back looking for a servant’s position. Dad gives him sandals: only nobility wore sandals, I’m told. “You’re part of the family. You’re nobility here.” At the very least, it’s provision for the sandals he’d lost, presumably in the pig farm.
4. And then instead of the recriminations the boy expected, Dad has a party celebrating his son’s return. There was no accusation whatsoever: just joy. And the joyful party is a big one. A fatted calf can feed a whole lot of partygoers. Either they went on for days or they invited the whole neighborhood.

By contrast, the older son was out working in the field and ended up resenting rather than repenting: resenting the younger brother’s party and distancing himself from Father through working in the field. He point-blank refused to come to the party; instead he whines about the other son. His recriminations are also fourfold:

'Lo, these many years I have been serving you; I never transgressed your commandment at any time; and yet you never gave me a young goat, that I might make merry with my friends. But as soon as this son of yours came, who has devoured your livelihood with harlots, you killed the fatted calf for him.'

1. “Look, I’ve served you for many years!” (implying, “and you haven’t even noticed!”)
2. “See how good I am! I always obeyed your commandments (unlike some sons of yours that I could mention).”
3. “You’re cheap! You never offered me a party (not even a little one for my friends. Without you, Dad).”
4. “It’s not fair! Your favored son hasn’t been anywhere nearly as righteous as I have, but you treat him like royalty!”

This brother doesn’t come to his senses like his younger sibling; Dad has to go to him, and this ungrateful kid chews him out pretty fiercely. Father affirms four things to him as well:

“And he said to him, ‘Son, you are always with me, and all that I have is yours. It was right that we should make merry and be glad, for your brother was dead and is alive again, and was lost and is found.’”

1. Relationship w/ God: “You’re always with me.” Don’t lose perspective: we’re just welcoming him back into what you have always had. It’s hard to have a great party celebrating our return when we haven’t run off & done stupid things.
2. Authority: “All that I have is yours.” This boy whined that Dad didn’t offer an animal for a party with his friends. Dad says, “Look, it’s all yours. Do with it as you like.” We older brothers forget that we don’t need to ask someone else to give us what is already ours. It’s Dad’s kingdom, but it’s our inheritance.
3. Relationship with the Family: “It was right that we should make merry….” It’s easy to lose track that we need to celebrate what God is doing in others, and sometimes that’s more important than working in the fields.
4. This isn’t about you. It’s about your younger brother.

It’s my opinion that there are a number of us elder brothers in the church. Not all of us, of course, but we’re not small in number. We’re working in the fields, choosing diligent work instead of celebrating with our friends over a goat or celebrating a brother’s return with a fatted calf.

The older brother here was waiting for Dad to notice, waiting for him to spontaneously reward him for his works. How many times have we seen that attitude in the church? I’m hoping you haven’t seen it in your own motivations; I’m afraid I have.

In the Kingdom of God, it’s good to party. The Law commanded it what? seven or so times per year: “Come together & celebrate!” In the New Testament, we’re commanded to rejoice all the time.

More than that, since all He has is ours, the party is to be our initiative; we don’t wait for someone to force it on us, for someone to notice us and reward the self-righteousness of our self-sufficiency.

Instead of joining the party, we have our collective noses to the grindstone, and we’ve functionally missed the fact that every part of the Kingdom is ours. The truth is different; the truth is that we’re not working for another master, regardless of what it feels like. This is our kingdom; we have a say in how it goes.

I say, “I choose to repent, not resent.”

I say, “It’s time to party!”

An Underground Gathering

My information said that the meeting started at two o’clock or so, but I didn’t have the chance to get there for a couple more hours. Besides, I wasn’t sure about it, so I wanted to arrive after they were well under way.

By the time four o’clock rolled around, I was quite lost in the county roads trying to find the place: It was already dark, and I was looking for an old barn, maybe half a mile from the nearest paved road so finding it was no easy task. I backtracked, tried the turnoff that I’d passed by a couple of miles back, saw another truck pulling into a dirt road, and headed down the same way. The road ended at a place that was obviously not what I was looking for, but we turned off just before that, wound around some sharp corners, and emerged into a field full of parked cars surrounding a barn, looking in the dark like a flock of baby chicks around their mother hen. Out of the barn came the sound I was expecting, the sound I was looking for. When I heard it, I realized how much I’d been longing for it.

I parked my truck and walked through the parked vehicles towards the barn; I noticed some older SUVs, some fancy new cars; the variety caught my attention. There were a handful of other folks arriving, and we said very little as we approached the barn: words weren’t actually necessary. This was also the sound that they were looking for; their faces showed the same sense of expectation that I was feeling.

We slid the door open, and the sound washed over us. It was palpable, nearly physical, though it wasn’t all that loud. Inside were maybe a hundred people. Twenty or thirty of them were playing instruments, men and women, black, white and others, young and old. The instruments were equally diverse: guitars, keyboards, drums from America, from Africa, from Ireland, from Asia, from places I'd never heard of. Even a didgeridoo from Australia, wired into the sound system. There were young kids playing drums and rhythm instruments. Most of the sound came from the instruments and from the several people singing into microphones. There was a basic sound system set up, but it was obvious that this was no show.

Nobody but the handful that entered with me even knew that we had arrived. Maybe twenty people had their hands in the air, others were kneeling, still more were dancing or waving flags. Some were visiting together near the tables in the back, tables piled high with food and drink. Kids played on the dirt floor. They took nothing away from the music.

I worked my way to the back of the room. I was trying not to disturb the worshippers, but I needn’t have bothered: most of them were oblivious of my passage; those that were greeted me with the great bear hugs of old friends or the whole-hearted hugs of family; it didn’t seem to matter if they knew me before that day or not. The diversity of people struck me again: these were people from almost every imaginable background, age, race, socio-economic group, religious persuasion.

The music never took a breath. There were a couple of microphones set up where anybody could walk right up and sing along with the music; those mics were nearly always busy, with intricate harmonies and counterpoints accentuating songs that nobody had ever heard before. Before I realized it, four or five hours had passed.

There were a hundred people there, and people were coming and going throughout the night. But the audience had only One. His presence filled the room like birdsong in the spring, like a welcome home after a long journey. There were a hundred voices singing a hundred different songs, all blended into one glorious chorus, and our Audience roared back His approval.

This was worth getting lost in the backwoods county roads for. This was worth being part of.

A Season of Training for Supernatural Provision

I drive a little 4x4 truck. I love driving a 4x4 because I can take it almost anywhere.

Funny thing about trucks: they need tires. Mine needs tires. The tires on it now are steel-belted radials, and the tread is worn down so much that the steel belts are sticking out pretty badly on one back tire and not much better on the other one. The front ones aren't much better.

My truck has pretty large tires, and so they’re pretty expensive. I priced some discount tires, and a set of four cheap ones tires was $800.00. I really need all four, but I could get by with just two. But we couldn’t afford four tires or two.

As if that weren't complicated enough, I had found out when the tires were going to be on sale, and saved up most of the money for two tires. But then the truck needed a clutch, and that took all of the money I had saved for new tires. I felt thwarted.

So we didn’t buy tires. I’ve been praying about what to do for tires. I don’t trust the truck to go very far while the tires are messed up. I drive to work, to church, and to the grocery store, and I DON’T drive to anywhere else. I don’t go camping with those tires. I don’t drive to places God’s doing cool stuff. I don’t get to visit folks in other areas. It’s sad. I bought the truck so I could drive it interesting places, and I can’t go anywhere.

I’ve been talking to God about my tires. In fact, I’ve been fussing about our finances in general. Our bills are paid, but it bothers me that we can’t give generously, and I was rather complaining.

And God’s been reminding me that we’re entering a season where we need to be able to find money in the mouths of fishes, where we need to be able to feed a crowd with five loaves and two fish.

This isn’t a season of lack; it’s a season of training.

I’ve been thinking about that, and I think it’s right. We need to learn to trust God’s provision, and even learn to expect it.

So I’ve been thinking about this, about God’s provision.

Today, I needed to buy gas for the truck. I checked the account, and we can afford it, so I head over to Costco, and I’m on the phone with my friend (it’s OK, I have a Bluetooth earset). I pulled into line at Costco’s gas pumps; one line was shorter than the rest, so naturally, I chose that one.

And right there in front of me, a man was stepping out of my truck’s twin to pump gas into it. His truck was identical to mine, except I have a canopy on mine and in the back of his, he had four large tires on four wheels.

I felt a small nudge in my spirit: “Those are for you. Go get them.” I hung up the phone and got out of the truck.

“Say, those tires aren’t for sale, are they?” and I eyed the tires closely. They looked to be the right wheels to fit my truck, and the tires were about the right size. The tread on a couple of them looked real good. I'll bet they'd fit my truck.

“No, not really. I was going to sell them to a buddy of mine for twenty bucks.” Oh well. It was a nice idea while it lasted. “But he never showed up.” Say what?

“Uh, I’ll give you twenty bucks for them.” Uh… do I have twenty bucks? Oh! Yeah, I do. Hey, that’s weird.

“Hunh? Oh. Ok. I’ll meet you right over there, after you fill up. You’ll be able to find my truck.”

So I tanked up, and drove over to where he was. I backed my truck up to his, and rolled four tires from the bed of his truck to the bed of mine: they are exactly the same size as the tires on my truck. I handed him twenty dollars, shook his hand and drove off, shaking my head at my Father's loving provision.

I had just bought at least $400 worth of tires for twenty bucks. They were my tires. I just needed to recognize them. And go get them.

Thanks, Dad. I love you too.