Perhaps you've heard of the story of the Prodigal Son.  One of Jesus' most well known parables, the Prodigal Son tells a moving story of love and forgiveness.  Given the audience to which Jesus told it (a mix of people who believed they were sinners and people who believed they were not), the Prodigal Son gives us powerful insights into the nature of God.
     For those who are not entirely familiar with the story, it tells a tale of a father with two sons.  One day, his youngest son comes to his father and asks for his share of the family estate.  Though this was an unusual request in its time, the father grants it.  Upon receiving his share, the son leaves home and proceeds to squander all of it on a life of debauchery and decadence.  When a famine hits the land, he begins to starve.
     Then he has a thought.  He will return home, ask his father's forgiveness, and work as a hired hand.  So he sets off.  Barely had he entered his father's land when his father saw him from afar.  Delighted, he ran to his son, embraced him, and held a great feast in his honor.  "Once my son was lost," he said, "and now he is found."
     Did the father reject his son?  No.  Did the father even scold his son?  No.  He simply loved him.  Many years ago, when I was seventeen years old, I returned home after a summer spent backpacking in the mountains of California.  Ragged and dirty, I was a sight few wanted to behold.  As I rang the bell of my family's home, I wondered:  would my mother, the mother whose heart I had broken repeatedly with my wild behavior in high school, still invite me back?  Would she make me sleep in the backyard?
     Would she still love me?
     Flinging the door open and kissing me on my cheek, my mother not once mentioned the pain of the past.  Not once did she remind me of what I had done.  She simply loved me.
     In the prodigal son's father response to his erstwhile son, in my mother's welcome to her wandering offspring, in any response of unconditional acceptance and forgiveness, we see the heart of who God is.  All God really wants to do is love us.  All God really wants to know is that we know he loves us, loves us totally, loves us completely.  He doesn't want to ask us questions, he doesn't want to reprimand us; he only wants to love us.
     As the apostle John wrote centuries ago, "In this is love, not that we loved God, but that he loved us . . . (1 John 4:10).
     Calling all prodigals:  come home!