Did you realize that nature is always teeming with an overabundance, prodigal, fertile, and wasteful? Why else do we have 90% more brain cells than we need and why else is nature scattering billions of seeds, of virtually everything, all over the planet every second?
And if life is so prodigal, what does this say about God, its author?
God, as we see in both nature and in scripture (and know from experience), is over-generous, over-lavish, over-extravagant, over- prodigious, over-rich, over-patient and over-gracious. If nature, scripture, and experience are to be believed, God is the absolute antithesis of everything that is stingy, miserly, frugal, narrowly calculating, or sparing in what it doles out. God is prodigal.
Dictionaries define "prodigal" as "wastefully extravagant and lavishly abundant." That certainly describes the God that Jesus incarnates and reveals.
We see this in the parable of the Sower. God, the sower, goes out to sow and he scatters his seed generously, almost wastefully, everywhere - on the road, among the rocks, among the thorns, on bad soil, and on rich soil. No farmer would ever do this. Who would waste seed on soil that can never produce a harvest? God, it seems, doesn't ask that question but simply keeps scattering his seed everywhere, over-generously, without calculating whether it is a good investment or not in terms of return. And, it seems, God has an infinite number of seeds to scatter, perpetually, everywhere. God is prodigious beyond imagination.
Among other things, this speaks of God's infinite riches, love, and patience. For us, there is both a huge challenge and a huge consolation in that. The challenge, of course, is to respond to the infinite number of invitations that God scatters on our path from minute to minute. The consolation is that, no matter how many of God's invitations we ignore, there will always be an infinite number of more. No matter how many we've already ignored or turned down, there are new ones awaiting us each minute. When we've gone through 39 days without praying or without opening the Word, and when we have gone 39 days running away from God like a Jonah, there's still a 40th day to respond. When we've ignored a thousand invitations, there's still another one waiting. God is prodigal, so are the chances God gives us.
If we look back on our lives and are truly honest, we have to admit that of all the invitations that God has sent us, we've probably accepted and acted on only a fraction of them. There have been countless times we've turned away from His invitation. For every invitation to obedience we've accepted, we've probably turned down a hundred. But that's the beauty and wonder of God's richness. God is not a petty creator and creation, itself, is not a cheap machine with barely enough energy and resources to keep it going. God and nature are prodigal. That's plain everywhere. Millions and millions of life-giving seeds blow everywhere in the world and we need only to pick up a few to become productive, fecund, capable of newness, maturity, and of producing life.
Jonah turned down God’s invitation to Nineveh. He ran from God. But God sent a wind to disturb his sleep on the ship. Then God sent a fish to house a drowning Jonah. Later God sent a plant to shelter an angry Jonah and then a worm to remove the shade so that Jonah sees the heart of His Maker. So much trouble, so many ways, so many attempts just to win the heart of a proud, prejudiced, picky prophet. All because He is a prodigal God!
There is a Jonah in all of us. Don’t miss LOST, the series that will point you back to the prodigal God, beginning this Sunday.
