Cure for Restlessness

 I've spent a lot of time in Luke 15 lately. What more can be said about the Prodigal Son? It is an oft-told story. It is pregnant with meaning. It is the type of story that draws you in and makes you think, about yourself, your life, what is meaningful. Among other things it is a story about restlessness, about fight and flight, lost and dead, saved and found. Jesus spoke to our core issue. He nailed our common experience. Humans are restless, contentless, lacking beings. We are seldom satisfied, at peace, and whole. We fight loneliness, insignificance, meaninglessness, and never feeling like we are enough. It is hard for us to be OKAY. We seem to have this sense always that something vital, essential, and important is missing from our lives. We believe that if we could just capture it (what is "it"?) we would be complete. Our strivings would cease. Desire would be rewarded, and we would rest in peace even while we are alive.

 

We have a list of clinical diagnoses for these conditions. We probably have a pill that can simulate the real thing. Even then we think that if we threw away the crutch we could not stand. Restlessness breeds dependence on something to prop us up and make it appear that we are strong even while we carry weakness deep within. We expend huge amounts of energy to cover up the insecurities and the vulnerabilities. We invent and learn to play countless games to insure that no one will know what everyone knows because everyone has the common experience, i.e. we are not enough.

 

Both boys in the story are restless. One runs and the other fights. One seeks it outside the home and the other longs for it inside the same home. When we consider that this home is God, the Father's home, it makes the story even more interesting. It has always amazed me that the Old Testament depicts God as a divorcee and an ineffective father. Israel is His wife and child, and as each they were unfaithful and delinquent. Couldn't God keep His wife and child happy? Yet they both were restless. They ran away from Him and they fought Him. Fight and flight are powerful within the human. But, yet again it was not the Husband/Father who failed. It was the wife/son who failed to see that what they longed for they had all along.

 

Luke 15:31 is the cure. It is the key. It is the essential truth that can provide us with peace, security, and relief from the restless life syndrome. "And he (the Father) said to him (the older son), 'My child you have always been with me, and all that is mine is yours.'" It may be so simple we miss it. If we could just realize as Christians that we are always with the Father and that all that is His is now ours, would we seek for substitute relationships and substitute possessions? When being with God and possessing His possessions becomes enough for us we will know we are enough, we have enough, and we don't have to do enough for contentment. Both boys had what they were looking for all along. It was right in front of them. It was all around them. Believe it. Enjoy it. Celebrate it.