Amazing Grace

There was once a young man who demanded his inheritance from his father and then moved to a distant land and squandered it on parties and prostitutes. He became so poor that he could no longer feed himself, and the only job he could find was feeding pigs, for which he was payed so little that even the pig slop looked good to him.

He soon realized what a fool he'd been and remembered his father, who was a kind man and generous to his workers. He wondered if he should return home. Of course he would not ask his father to accept him as his son, but perhaps he would have mercy on him and hire him to work in his fields. But whenever he thought of his father he was filled with shame and fear, and could not bring himself to go home.

Then one day as he was sitting in the mud with the pigs he saw his father approaching. Fear and guilt gripped him, and he could not meet his father's eye. But his father bent down in the mud and touched him.

"My son, why have you not come home?"

The son looked up, sorrowfully. "I was afraid. I was ashamed. I didn't think you'd want to see me again."

"You were wrong. Every day I've stood at my window and waited for you to come home. Even though you despised me, shamed me, turned your back on me, I have always been your father, and I have always loved you and longed to forgive you. If you had come home I would have run out to meet you. I would have given you a new robe and a ring, and I would have embraced you and kissed you and celebrated your coming with a feast. We would have rejoiced together as if you were dead and had come back to life!"

The son looked at his father in wonder. "You would do that for me? Even now you would forgive me for all I've done?"

The father shook his head. "No, I said I would have forgiven you, but I will not forgive you now. Since your birth, and despite all your faults and failures I have loved you, but my love has ended. All these years you could have returned to me - even yesterday I would have embraced you as a son - but not today. I've come to tell you that on this day I disown you and I withdraw my forgiveness and my love. I am no longer your father; you are no longer my son. Do what you will - beg, starve, die in the streets. I care less for you than for these pigs, even less than for the slop you feed them or the mud you're sitting in. Whatever remorse you may now feel, however much you may long for my forgiveness, until the day you die you will never again speak with me or enter my presence."

And the father turned his back on the one who was once his son, and left him in the mud with the pigs.


I have a great difficulty believing that God's forgiveness expires when we die. If it's true that God's love and compassion and mercy are vastly greater than (or even comparable to) those of any human, it's inconceivable to me that he would eternally banish those who die before repenting.

"Though the mountains be shaken and the hills be removed, yet my unfailing love for you will not be shaken nor my covenant of peace be removed."

"Can a mother forget the baby at her breast and have no compassion on the child she has borne? Though she may forget, I will not forget you! See, I have engraved you on the palms of my hands."