“My son was dead and is alive again, he was lost and is found.”

The century that lies behind us has received the name of the century of the child.  There was a good reason for this.   More than ever before in history people were interested in the child.

We would be equally justified to call our 21^st century the century of youth.  In our current society youth and youthfulness have become an ideal.  This ideal not only applies to younger people; adults too and even older people have to follow it and stay young and vital as long as possible.  The ideal picture of eternal youth is only relatively new.  Formerly, people looked at the course of life differently.  A well-known saying went: “In youth an idealist, as an adult a realist, as a greybeard a mystic.”  When we grow old we have a natural inclination to turn inward more and look back on our life.  “Looking back in wonder,” a well-known authoress called it.

Only, when we do that at an advanced age, life does not look anymore as it did before.  If we are honest with ourselves, we see more and more the shortcomings.  The last stretch of the path of life, which we go through in increasing loneliness, is permeated by the realization: I have separated myself from my divine origin and intended purpose.  I come home with empty hands, poor and needy like the prodigal son.  At the end of life we are all prodigal sons and daughters.

But precisely then, when we have lost all, the Father comes to meet us and bestows on us the only thing we still lack after a life of separation: forgiveness.

 

-Rev. Bastiaan Baan, August 11, 2024