We must celebrate and rejoice, because your brother was dead and has come to life again; he was lost and has been found.( Lk 15:32).
God is good all the time.
Painful reasons can delay or stop us from reconciling with those we love as families and friends. However, no cause can emerge stronger and more healing as the decision to forgive and reconcile relationships.
Jesus uses the story of the celebrated family reconciliation about a son who returned home after messing up his father’s love and resources to indicate how God is always ready to welcome us back no matter how we have messed up our relationship with him.
Notice that the father in the story is God, and the elder son is us, humanity. The challenge here is to make our relationship with God and others follow this pattern.
The father's willingness to let the estranged relationship with his son be healed and the elder brother's decision to accept his brother invites us not to close relationships or insists on who is wrong, but forget and move on to hug, embrace, shake hands, and smile again. It is simply learning to be like our heavenly father.
A young man tells of how his big brother's messy life led to family estrangement. He referred to him as an "emotional tornado of destruction" who, married and divorced multiple times, failed to pay child support, stole money from their mother who was suffering from dementia.
As the “failed” brother finally left town, he had to deal with the financial messes he left behind, make court appearances, and hire attorneys. These reasons made him close the relationship with his brother and stopped talking to him because he “could not stand the sight of him and what he had selfishly done.” It took him fourteen years before he decided “move on” and let him “know that despite the years that had passed in anger, he was still my big brother, and I loved him.”
Greater love surpasses all reasons to close relationships, cancels out all offenses, and heals all hurts; for Jesus teaches us that “no one has greater than to lay down his own life for his friends (Jn 15:13). We all need the grace and the courage to let go and heal.