It’s too good to be true!!!

“If it’s too good to be true, then it’s probably not true”. At least that’s what I taught in the Commerce class around the topic of consumer law and the familiar precautions one must take to keep up with the latest trends of Scams around.

Like how many of us get those messages or emails telling us how lucky we are that we are the 1st, 5th, 100th person. How LUCKY!!! We won a prize!!! Yeh, whatever! Even if we were given a prize we tend to get suspicious that it will be taken away or we wish the ground my open up and swallow us. I have never won the lotto but my sense those who do surely must first think that it is a hoax!!!
Even when we enter competitions like footy tipping we offer an pre-competing jinx and say that we bet that we won’t win because we never win anything.
Stuff for free trouble us and rightly so. I mean many scammers are out there. It’s not just about them though, free emotional stuff trouble us. My dad used to tell me regurgitating a famous Arabic saying that people wouldn’t say hello to you unless they want to use you for something.

Even we find oftentimes that after we are cared and loved or given something for free that much later on people ask for something in return. Thus what was once free came at a cost later on. Then you hear people telling you that nothing is for free these days. Again probably rightly so in many ways.

Even stories of siblings, couples, business partners fighting and waring, hammers down that impression. Our own experiences of familial or friendship love broken in many ways tell us that it is all about give and take. You need to give to receive and nothing happens without giving first.

The way our parenting works and comments we make to our children hammer down the point further. I will love you IF….. IF you do well at this or listen to that. Our reward system at school, home and work encourage and revolve around understandably positive reinforcement. You will be rewarded only IF… IF you do well or preform. We don’t reward those who fail or come last….

Even we struggle in relationship ls especially at the beginning because i think how is this person into me and I haven’t done anything. In friendships we even can become mistrustful as soon as we sense traces of unconditional love.
We absorb this attitude and become so suspicious of any free gift. How often when someone approach me nicely I say: Now tell me, what is it? What do you want?

How true this is when it comes to our image and our relationship with God. Unbelievably prevalent among the most faith filled believers. We absorb this attitude like soil absorbing water and project it unto God. We struggle so much with Free gift of Love that God offers us. We struggle with Grace. Why? I think because it is Free!!!!

We feel unworthy of anything free and so we get suspicious. We start to come up and rehash old sins and wounds to tell ourselves how undeserving we are of this. Guilt kicks in. We run away and deny God’s free gift.

It is like the dry soil inside of us, originally made for unconditional love but now used so much to conditional love struggles with unconditional, undeserved, un-initiated pouring down of rain. Either we run to get an umbrella or hide under a shelter. We run indoors so to speak and occupy ourselves so as not to feel the rain. Why because its overwhelming!

Free grace overwhelms us. We want it but ultimately it frightens us!!!! How many young people I have met who struggle with their own self worth! How many have I met who always deflect a compliment! Oh my Lord! I am like that. I can’t handle compliments. I deflect and change the subject. I am not worthy! I too am suspicious of free grace!!!

Yet the Gospel especially that of Luke is filled with stories and parables that Jesus lives and tells of God’s overwhelming and extravagant love. Truly undeserved. The parables of the prodigal son sums this up well. It gives us a window into the extravagant love of a father towards a “lost” son. As prodigal as the son was in wasting the inheritance, we see a father prodigal and wasteful in his love towards both sons. He reminds the older son “you are always with me and everything I have is yours”.

It is hard to imagine in human terms the freely unmerited love of God. The younger son had prepared a speech to deliver to his dad when he got home but was cut off. The fathers love was so overwhelming that the elder son could not handle it. It’s not that we can’t only accept free love, it is also that we struggle when it is given to others.

Henri Nouwen asks what is it that made the younger son leave home in the first place. He begs the question whether the inner and outer voices are drawing us away from home, for home in the Fathers house is “too good to be true”. So we are reminded by these constant voices that the answer is “out there”, that the thirst can be quenched “elsewhere”.

Home is not an external place. It is an inner place at the heart of who we are. The voice of the father is always softer, gentler and hence the loud voices can drown it out. It the inner voice of love. Free and absolutely overwhelming and extravagant. It says to me and you:

“I already love you, you are always with me and everything I have is yours. You do not have to perform or wear masks. In fact stop performing. I want you as you are. As for the masks, keep taking them off. It’s ok to be naked and real in my presence. I already love you unconditionally as you are.

I love your scars and wounds. On the cross they have become mine. I want you just like that. In your sinfulness. In your brokenness. In your anxiety. In your fragmented life. In your messy self.

You have nothing to prove or achieve. I loved you first before you existed and there’s nothing you need to DO so I can love you more. Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise.

I have given all to you on the Cross, the “once for all” event of my love for you. I have emptied myself in you. I love you madly, deeply and in your mathematical human world, illogically. This is the inner voice of love that can only be heard in the silence of your heart. It’s hard I know because it’s a unique voice. I am the air that you breath that gives life.

I know you cannot find me easily and that is causing you deep pain and so many wrong choices. This is not because I play hard to get or am complicated. Not at all it is because I AM. I AM simple. The reality is that you are searching out for what is in. I am closer to you than you are to yourselves. For my closeness to you because i love you sometimes can be blinding like looking at the sun on a hot summers day. It cannot be any other way because I love you and want total unity with you and that can only be if I am intimately present in you.

So take a backward step, slow down, give me space to fill every dark corner of your being. Let me in. Let my love in. Don’t be afraid! I am your life! Let me transform every darkness, every illness, every sin, every death into love and life!”