'Father, I want right now what's coming to me.'
-- Luke 15:12
As our pastor spoke on this passage recently, I found myself staring at these words from The Message. What a powerful translation of the more commonly read version, ‘Father, give me my share of the estate.’
'I want right now what is coming to me.' A couple of things struck me as my mind meandered over what I was reading. I want stuff, AND I want it right now. This is happening less and less for me, but I still recognize a strong legacy of it from earlier days in my life. It is interesting that when we are younger, we have our whole life ahead of us ... and yet we still want things 'right now'. We don't want to wait. As we age, we have much less yet ahead of us ... and we seem, perhaps in some form of maturity, to recognize more of our need to wait. How does that work? What is going on in us when we are younger? What is going on in us as we age (and, hopefully, mature)? It is that we come to realize that most of what we really want won't really come now? Is it that things we think we want (which do come 'now') don't typically satisfy us? Perhaps it takes a 'few round-and-round we go' in life to start to see this truth. The difference between what we want and what we need. And perhaps the hidden (and greater) truth is that we discover the things that can truly satisfy us are not in the things we thought they were and that they are largely 'coming', but often not yet here. So a life-long transfer is underway, one which we don't often recognize until we are well through it. A transfer of a demand for satisfaction now to a longing for a different kind of satisfaction, that we somehow become more willing to wait for.
The other thing that surprisingly stuck out to me is that the younger brother used the words, 'I want ... what is coming to me'. He had an innate sense that something would be given to him, even as he asked for it in the moment. The older brother knew what 'was coming' as well and apparently, at least at the time, chose to stay where we was in order to get it. He, too, knew something of 'what was coming' to him. I have never noticed these words of the younger brother, perhaps because of the often translated terms like estate or inheritance and the physicality of those descriptions. What struck me in this interpretation of the phrasing was that something much broader than the inheritance of physical things was revealed. He wanted 'what was coming'. He thought he knew something of what that was, largely due I suspect to his immaturity. But in one sense, what he really wanted was to 'own the farm'. He knew, in fact, that he would someday. So why did he want it now, if he already knew he would be getting it?
Because, from time to time I recognize this spirit within myself, I think he wanted the privileges of this ownership and he didn't want to have to wait for it. This likely reveals that he thought he knew what such privileges (and the power to have them) would provide for him ... rather than what such privileges are really there for. He wanted the rights and benefits of his perception of the power and wealth that ownership would provide. We all want this don't we? I have wanted it. At times, I still do. But what I often have not realized is that such aspirations were quite self-serving and rarely designed for the good of anyone else but me. This is often terribly difficult to decipher in the moment. But it is striking how clear it can become in retrospect.
The father is way ahead of his sons on this, just as God is way ahead of us on what is good for us when we are young and as we get older. When I'm younger, I'm not trusting my father that much. I'm eager to prove myself and to get whatever benefits I might achieve from it. When I'm older, I'm less impressed with my own potential, and much more aware of what all I need to be protected from, what all I need to learn, how dependent I am on so many things outside of myself, how much of anything I ever am able to enjoy is really provided to me, not unlike an estate. And the inheritance I am receiving as I learn to wait for the deeper things will allow me to truly be in a position to function as an owner, one who provides goodness to others ... most largely through the goodness I have learned to recognize, that I have received from my Father.
I want to live more out of what is coming to me ... and to learn to wait for it and to stop asking for it now, knowing that the natural order of things is being used by God to make me able truly understand what power and privileges are really about ... the opportunity to serve others, in God's good name.
In other words, I want my version of Luke 15:12 to be something like:
'Father, I want what's coming to me. Whatever that ends up being. I am willing to wait for it, by trusting you in the work you have given me to do today.'
