Jesus answers prayer

The strange thing is that Luke 15 has got to be one of the easiest passages in the Bible to interpret. "[T]he Pharisees and the scribes grumbled, saying, 'This man receives sinners and eats with them.'" So Jesus tells two parables in which something is lost, found, and friends come over to celebrate. Thus, at the end of Luke 15, when the older brother refuses to celebrate the return of the younger son, the whole thing rather plainly becomes an indictment of the Pharisees and scribes for their failure to rejoice over the Lord's recovery of the lost sheep of Israel. So why do people keep thinking this is a parable about the younger, prodigal son? Most likely, it's because of this line: "For this my son was dead, and is alive again; he was lost, and is found."

Two years ago we lost our third child, because, technically, she wasn't ours. But four times I have gone into a hospital and they've handed me a baby and told me to take care of it, and for the life of me I couldn't make a distinction between my third child and the other three simply because she happened to have a different biological mother and father. Nonetheless, because her biological father convinced himself and some caseworkers he could take care of her, my wife and I had to give her up.

For six months I continued to live my life, and do my job, and laugh not infrequently. However, every time I thought about my daughter, a giant black hole opened up underneath me and I didn't know how I could go on breathing. I felt constant and tremendous guilt, which, I've been surprised to learn, many people have found hard to understand. On their logic, as it wasn't my choice to hand her over to irresponsible people, it couldn't be my fault. But fatherhood is an unchosen obligation to protect and defend one's children, and any man who doesn't die to keep his child from harm has failed, no matter the circumstances. That was what we lived with for six months.

And then she came back, and on June 27 of this year she was adopted, and on July 8 she was baptized.

We wanted to make her middle name "Jesus Answers Prayer," but thought that might not fit on all the forms one has to fill out in life. Nonetheless, it's true, and that has become our testimony and witness. American conservative presbyterian circles in our day have become somewhat obsessed with the doctrine of covenant, and tend to focus on God's promises to individuals and families. Without wanting to diminish those, what can be forgotten is the character of God which is the basis for those promises. He is the God prodigal in his mercy and compassion and pity on us poor sinners, and so he made a covenant within himself which he kept at the cost of his own life so that he might make that covenant with us. His love is wider than those individuals and families with whom he happens currently to be in covenant, and so he brought my daughter back to us and into his Church.

Jesus doesn't say what all the friends were doing during the time the three things were lost, before they came to celebrate with the shepherd and the woman and the father. However, my wife and I know what our friends were doing: they were praying to Jesus. He heard their prayers, and he answered them. Our friends were not like the older brother, distant and censorious, and our Lord was not far off. Our child was his child, the absence of a stated promise to that effect notwithstanding, and he has always been the good shepherd who goes off after the lost sheep.

She was lost, and is found.

Jesus answers prayer.