God's Love is Unbreakable.

Watching  Jesus' story of the two sons,  Luke 15:11-32

Campaigners was awesome this morning. I got to meet a few new parents, a handful of new kids, and watch as the other leaders really jumped in and started mixing it up with our middle school friends. This week's turnout was pretty incredible: 54 kids came to eat doughnuts, play a game, and hear about God's love for them... it was more than I expected and I think we are going to need more doughnuts! 

Today's game was called "body parts match up." Each kids found a partner, and when we said "go" started mingling with everyone else. After a few seconds, we would call out two body parts and the kids would have to find their partner and touch the two parts. It was a blast (we made sure that everything was clean)!

Ear to ear!

Ear to back of neck!

Hand to hand!

After the game we watched as some volunteers acted out the parable Jesus told of the "Two Sons" or as most of us know it, "The Prodigal Son." This is one of my favorite stories Jesus told because it is so easy to relate to the sons, and it is a great image of God as a loving Father that NEVER gives up on his children.

In the story the younger son asks his father to give him his inheritance early, basically saying that he wished his father was dead, and then took his money and left the family, the country he grew up in, and set out for a far away land. He soon waisted his new wealth on "reckless" living and found himself totally broke in the midst of a famine. He was so hungry that he hired himself out to feed pigs, and "longed to fill himself with the pigs food." This would have been particularly shameful for a Jewish man in those days. After a while,  "he comes to his senses" and decides to go back home and see if his dad would let him become a servant.

Before the son reaches his home, his father sees him, "while he was still a long way out," and runs to him, embraces him, and kisses him. He puts a ring on his finger, gives him a robe, and sandals on his feet, a sign that he is a full member of the family! This son that had done about anything he could have done to hurt his father and family was welcomed back home! The father threw a huge party to celebrate, saying, "This son of mine was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is found!" What a great picture of a completely compassionate and loving God!

But the story does not end there. There is another son, and older son. This son hears the party and asks a servant what it is about. When he discovers it is for his estranged brother he is not filled with joy, but resentment. He refused to join the celebration and stayed outside. Again, the father comes looking for his lost son, this time just outside the party. After the son declares his anger at both his brother (who he doesn't even call brother anymore) and his father, the father explains that all he ever had was his son's as well, and that they HAD to celebrate the homecoming of his lost brother.

Honestly, I can relate to both of these sons. There are times when I have failed, both in life, and morally, to the point where I can't imagine that God could still want to call me his beloved son... but he does, he always does. There are also times when it is so easy to judge others and get angry at others for their mistakes, for their sin... and even then God comes out looking for me. God is a God that loves, that forgives, that is "slow to anger, abounding in love." He comes looking for the lost, and as Romans 8:38-39 tells us so beautifully, "... neither death nor life, angles or demons, the present or the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor ANYTHING ELSE IN ALL CREATION, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord."

What incredible news. As one of the leaders told me this week, this can be hard to understand because it is so backwards from what we are used to experiencing. It isn't often that we get to experience this kind of love, the love we experience is unusually, to some degree, tied to our actions and behavior... but it isn't so with God. His love is complete, his love is perfect, and his love is everlasting. As the younger son had to learn, we are free to try to do things on our own, but life is much more full and complete when we are living a life with our Father and his son Jesus.

So I encourage you to ask your middle schooler about what they did this morning at Campaigners, ask them about the block of wood we gave them, and hopefully you can have some good conversation talking about the unbreakable love of our Father.