Nature’s first green is gold,

Her hardest hue to hold.

Her early leafs a flower;

But only so an hour.

Then leaf subsides to leaf.

So Eden sank to grief,

So dawn goes down to day.

Nothing gold can stay.(1)

One of my most cherished memories is of the New England landscape in the fall. The vibrant colors from dogwood, sassafras, sumac, red oak, and maples can only be described as the finest artist’s palette of paints—crimsons and scarlets, purples, oranges, and yellows splashed across the canvas. Making our pilgrimage each year to the local fair, the route transported my husband and me into that world of color, as the road would bend through picturesque towns and take us deeper and deeper into that fall canvas of color. Sadly, this beauty was transient. Fall rains and wind would come to fade and to muddle those colors. All that would remain were the dull browns melding and making their home in the dark soil that encompassed them.

Nothing gold can stay is the bittersweet reality Robert Frost calls to mind in his poem by the same name. The beauty of the yellow birch leaves, like the young flower of springtime fades and falls away. Frost laments all those moments of precious and profound beauty that are equally fleeting and transient. These experiences are the hardest hues to hold. Just like the fading vibrancy of the New England fall, our very lives and all we experience quickly pass before us in the blink of an eye.

The ephemeral nature of life is opined by artists and poets, philosophers, and clerics around the world. Many of the world’s great religious traditions address the ephemeral nature of life. Buddhism identifies, for example, how suffering arises as a result of trying to hold onto the impermanent and the fleeting.(2) In Tibetan Buddhism, specifically, mandalas made from colored sand are created and dismantled in a ritual that symbolizes the transitory nature of material life. Likewise in Hinduism, cremation became a vehicle for expressing the ephemerality of bodily life. The ancient Hebrew poets similarly filled their stanzas with the acknowledgement that life is fleeting, short, and temporary: “Yet you sweep people away in the sleep of death—they are like the new grass of the morning: In the morning it springs up new, but by evening it is dry and withered.”(3) And springing out of the Hebrew tradition, Christianity reiterates this theme: “Yet you do not know what your life will be like tomorrow. You are just a vapor that appears for a little while and then vanishes away.”(4)

For many living in light of such realities today, the temptation is to try to hold onto whatever we think will anchor us to permanence. Or, it is to abandon ourselves to eating, drinking, and being merry because tomorrow we die. Is there another way?

Christians believe in a God who entered into the ephemeral and the temporal in the person of Jesus. In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus affirmed the teaching of his own Hebraic tradition when he encouraged his listeners not to worry, but to trust the God who “arrays the grass of the field, which is alive today and tomorrow is thrown into the furnace.” Life is short, Jesus acknowledges, but the God who cares for the birds of the air and the lilies of the field will care for us. So we do not have to cling onto our lives or the treasures of this earth. As one commentator notes, “Just prior to his teaching on worrying… Jesus warns his listeners against storing up ephemeral treasure on earth… A central theme of his ministry and enacted in his own life, is that the proper way to respond to the nature of reality is to give away one’s life rather than hold on to it, to open our hands and let things go rather than to close our fist around them….”(5)

In embracing all that is ephemeral about life, Jesus opens and offers his life for others. In fact, Jesus extends an ironic invitation to accept ephemerality and death in order to truly find life—and to find life eternal. Not as simply an escape from death, but the eternal life that comes from a relationship with God in the here and now. Jesus prays for those who would follow him, “that they may know you the only true God” for in doing so they would find eternal life.(6) The challenge Jesus sets before those who would follow is the challenge to “die” to holding on; it is to choose—in this life where nothing gold can stay—what makes for life eternal.

Margaret Manning Shull is a member of the speaking team at Ravi Zacharias International Ministries in Bellingham, Washington.

(1) Robert Frost, “Nothing Gold Can Stay,” Ed. Edward Connery Lathem, The Poetry of Robert Frost, (New York: Henry Holt Publishers, 1969), 222-223.

(2) The Norton Anthology of World Religions: Buddhism, Ed., Jack Miles (New York: Norton, 2015).

(3) Psalm 90:5-6.

(4) James 4:14.

(5) Iain Provan, The NIV Application Commentary Series: Ecclesiastes and Song of Songs (Grand Rapids: Zondervan Books, 2001), 60.

(6) John 17:3.

There is something about an inbox that subtly (and not so subtly) conveys the notion that we are important. With three missed calls on the cell phone, 18 unread e-mails, and two messages on the answering machine, we are pelted with the enticing idea: “Someone needs me!” The immediate ring, buzz, or pop-up note proclaiming the arrival of these new messages is somehow complimentary, even as it demands our attention—”Check your mailbox now! Someone is looking for you!”

The language of technology seems to further our sense of importance by bidding us to claim and personalize these worlds. I am only one click away from “my documents,” “my calendar,” “my favorites,” “my music,” “my pictures,” and “my shopping cart.” Anthropologist Thomas de Zengotita calls it “MeWorld.” In a book that examines the ways in which the world of media shapes our lives, de Zengotita portrays the technologically advanced, media-saturated West as a world filled with millions of individual “flattered selves,” each living in its own insulated, personalized world.(1) He believes the narcissism that comes from living in MeWorld has been fashioned and is constantly being fed by media representations in all areas of our lives, from those private representations that purport us the star (selfies, twitter, Facebook) to the public advertisements, television, and magazines that ever address us personally.

Subtle as it may be, the most precarious part of flattered living is that we gradually lose sight of both life and self. Despite all of the overt declarations on my computer, this is not, in fact, “my world.” Though I am flattered by the attention of MeWorld, I am not the center of all existence. French philosopher Rene Descartes outlined one reason why: “Now, if I were independent of all other existence, and were myself the author of my being…I should have given myself all those perfections of which I have some idea, and I should thus be God.” In other words, if I were truly independent, if the world truly revolved around me, why should I find in myself any imperfection at all? Is it not then irrational to live as if I am the center of the world?

The Christian worldview takes this inquiry one step further. Namely, how do I cultivate an awareness that this is God’s world in a world that reminds me at every turn that it is mine? The counter-cultural admission that we are not our own nor walking alone is certainly a starting point. A poem called “The Avowal” by Denise Levertov speaks to such an awareness:

As swimmers dare

to lie face to the sky

and water bears them,

as hawks rest upon air

and air sustains them,

so would I learn to attain

freefall, and float

into Creator Spirit’s deep embrace,

knowing no effort earns

that all-surrounding grace.

For the Christian, living both coherently and authentically involves an understanding of what truly undergirds us. Hence the fitting prayer of the hymnist: This is my Father’s world. O let me ne’er forget.

When Jesus looked to the disciples on one of his last nights with them on earth, he covered their hearts with a similar notion: “Do not let your hearts be troubled. Trust in God; trust also in me. In my Father’s house are many rooms; if it were not so, I would have told you. I am going there to prepare a place for you. And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come back and take you to be with me that you also may be where I am. You know the way to the place where I am going… I am the way and the truth and the life.”(2)

As I Christian, there is some relief in confessing that my world is surely the Lord’s and all that is in it. It is also my starting point, the place where I begin the journey toward home. We are not flattered on our way to this house, but transformed by the very one who prepares the way.

Jill Carattini is managing editor of A Slice of Infinity at Ravi Zacharias International Ministries in Atlanta, Georgia.

(1) Thomas de Zengotita, Mediated: How the Media Shapes Your World and the Way You Live in It (New York: Bloomsbury Publishing, 2005), 21.

(2) John 14:1-4, 6.

“The following dissertation concerning the Trinity, as the reader ought to be informed, has been written in order to guard against the sophistries of those who disdain to begin with faith, and are deceived by a crude and perverse love of reason.”(1) Thus begins Augustine’s dissertation on the Trinity, written for those whose perverse love of reason prevents a heart of faith. Perhaps this is a warning for all of us who work so hard to logically make sense of something as ineffable and mysterious as the divine nature of God. Writing over a thousand years later, Leonardo Boff intoned a similar warning: “We should never forget that the New Testament never uses the expressions ‘trinity of persons’ and ‘unity of nature.’ To say God is Father, Son and Holy Spirit is revelation; to say that God is ‘one substance and three Persons’ is theology, a human endeavor to fit the revelation of God within the limitations of reason.”(2)

If reason is conscribed by logic, then at our best, we must speak of the Trinity in analogical terms. In other words, we look for analogies from our human experience, analogical images, pictures, or descriptions that offer an analogous explanation for that which is unexplainable. For Augustine, love best illustrated the nature of the Trinity. “Now when I, who am asking about this, love anything, there are three things present: I myself, what I love, and love itself. For I cannot love love unless I love a lover; for there is no love where nothing is loved. So there are three things: the lover, the loved and the love.”(3) From this analogy, Augustine argues that God’s nature is indeed relational and personal as it is expressed in a divine community of love. It cannot be said that God is love (1 John 4:8) if God is alone and monadic. Instead, love resides both in God’s nature as a personal being and in relationship to the beloved (Jesus Christ) by love (Holy Spirit).

While at best an analogy, Augustine’s definition communicates two key scriptural truths about God: God is both personal and relational in God’s very nature. God is not a distant being, removed from Creation, but God is personally involved in creation. Indeed, God is so personally involved that God even participated in our humanity through Jesus Christ. This is what the theological doctrine of the Incarnation communicates. As a personal God, therefore, God is relational. God is love, as the Epistle of John tells us, and that love is shared in the divine community of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Indeed, through love God reaches out to the creation and calls it back into relationship through the redeeming work of Jesus Christ by the transformational work of the Holy Spirit.

While this analogy isn’t intended to answer all of our logical reasoning concerning the nature of God as Trinity, it does lead us to a vital application for the Christian life. We too, as image-bearers of God, do not reflect that image solely in our own persons by ourselves. Instead, to bear the image of God as personal, relational Trinity is to be in community with one another. Relationships, as they image God, are intended to reflect the divine community of love, redemptive and reflective of the very love of God as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Therefore, we might ask, as a redeemed community of love, how ought we to reflect the reality of the Trinity in our world? How might we draw others into redeemed community and away from loneliness, isolation, and self-destruction?

To understand the Trinity is not simply to analyze it logically “through a crude and perverse love of reason.” Rather, to understand the Trinity is to live in the light of its implications for human communities. Far more than a logical construct of a paradoxical nature, the Trinity is to be the way in which we image God in this world through the community of believers—and not as isolated individuals. We are to call others into that community enfolded in the life of the Trinity—Father, Son, and Holy Spirit—love, lover, and beloved in divine community.

Margaret Manning Shull is a member of the speaking and writing team at Ravi Zacharias International Ministries in Bellingham, Washington.

(1) St. Augustine, “On the Trinity,” Basic Writings of St. Augustine, Volume 2, Ed. Whitney J. Oates (Grand Rapids: Baker Books, 1992), 687.

(2) Leonardo Boff, Trinity and Society (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1988), 156.

(3) St. Augustine, “On the Trinity,” Basic Writings of St. Augustine, Volume 2, Ed. Whitney J. Oates (Grand Rapids: Baker Books, 1992), 790.

A friend of mine describes coming to terms as a little girl with the sad thought that she would never be God’s favorite. Knowing that God had so many children, knowing that good fathers love equally, she knew her hope of being the favorite was never going to pan out.

When I first heard her say this, I smiled at the idea of a little girl worrying so seriously about God’s fairness and how it affected her. God is much more often accused of being un-fair. But the more I thought about my friend’s disappointment, the more I think this is exactly the difficulty most of us have with God—although most of us will never admit it. The unguarded sincerity of a child voices what we do not: If we are being honest, no one really wants to be seen as equal to all others.

The desire to be someone’s favorite, to the best at something, to exceed the expectations of those around us, or to be known for being better than most—at anything—has been fostered within us since birth. New mothers happily report when their toddlers are in the highest percentile in motor, social, or language skills. A child delights in winning the spelling bee; employees strive to get ahead, to be noticed, to be superior. At every turn, we are as horrified by equality as we are at mediocrity. Even if the desires remain unvoiced, we want to be the best at something. We long to be someone’s—anyone’s—favorite.

For souls in tune with this quality, there is one story Jesus tells that probably disturbs us more than others. In this parable, Jesus describes a landowner who went out in the morning and hired workers for his vineyard. All agreed upon a wage of a denarius, they were sent to the vineyard, and the work began. A few hours later, the master went out and hired more laborers for his vineyard. A few hours after this, again a few hours later, and yet again after this, he hired some more. When evening came, the owner of the vineyard called the workers forward to collect their wages, beginning with the last ones hired and going on to the first. Jesus explains, “The workers who were hired about the eleventh hour came and each received a denarius. So when those came who were hired first, they expected to receive more. But each one of them also received a denarius. When they received it, they began to grumble against the landowner. ‘These men who were hired last worked only one hour,’ they said, ‘and you have made them equal to us who have borne the burden of the work and the heat of the day’” (Matthew 20:9-12).

Equality in this story is nothing short of offensive. Those who have worked harder and longer want only to be recognized, favored for their work, commended for their superiority over the others. But the landowner only responds with words that further offend: “‘Friend, I am not being unfair to you. Didn’t you agree to work for a denarius? Take your pay and go. I want to give the man who was hired last the same as I gave you. Don’t I have the right to do what I want with my own money? Or are you envious because I am generous?’” (vv. 13-15).

In this difficult parable, Jesus gives us a clear look at our definitions of injustice, our sense of superiority, and our hatred of God’s fairness when it fails to favor us. When generosity is showered on someone else, when equality shatters our sense of being on top, God’s goodness often elicits not goodness, but envy, hostility, disappointment, and anger. But the master reminds his disgruntled workers that he did exactly what was promised. It was only when they compared themselves to the others that they began to feel slighted.

Jesus proclaims the coming of a kingdom that turns this world as we know it on its head and requires a complete reframing of perspective. God’s grace is not meant to be a source of disappointment nor is God’s kingdom meant to be a hierarchy of skill and favoritism. On the contrary, God reminds us that greatness comes in ways that shock and disorient our many rules and systems. For God’s grace bestowed at any hour is generous and confrontational, the power of the Cross is scandalous and underserved, the love of the Father always boldly given and lavished. Receiving the generosity of the master, we are united with the Son in whom God is well-pleased. In his economy, we are made heirs of God and co-heirs with Christ himself. And there is no greater favoritism.

Jill Carattini is managing editor of A Slice of Infinity at Ravi Zacharias International Ministries in Atlanta, Georgia.

Hans Christian Andersen tells of the emperor who loved new clothes. This emperor so admired modeling his new robes that he spent all of his time in his dressing room. In fact, he had little concern for anything else in his kingdom.

One day two swindlers came to town announcing they were weavers of the finest clothes imaginable. Their royal colors and fabrics, they claimed, were exceptionally stunning. In fact, they were of such quality that they were only visible to the finest few! Those who were unfit for their office or were hopelessly stupid would not be able to see them at all.

The emperor was immediately taken by this description and provided the weavers with large amounts of money. He wanted to know those who were unfit for their posts; he also wanted to see the foolish and the clever within his empire. Yet when the emperor went to try on the garments, he was most distraught to realize that it was he who saw nothing at all. But the king would not admit his stupidity or incompetence; he would not let anyone think him a fool. He announced that the cloth was very beautiful, and all the courtiers rapidly agreed. In a great procession the next day, everyone spoke in admiration of the emperor’s new clothes. They loved the detail! The colors were beautiful! The garments were like no other, they said. But then from the back of the crowd a child spoke up, observing what the rest would not: The emperor was wearing nothing.

Imagine finding out that the one thing you have desperately attempted to keep veiled in secrecy was not actually veiled at all. The thought bears the unsettling sense of finding yourself unclothed before a crowded room. Would you feel foolish? Would you run and hide? Or would you insist the veil was still there? Andersen ends with a glimpse into the mind of the king: “[The words of the child] made a deep impression upon the emperor, for it seemed to him that they were right. But he thought to himself regardless, ‘Now I must bear up to the end.’” Idols are not easy to own up to; how much more so, when what we idolize is not really there in the first place.

I believe, however, that there might be another response—besides denial or shame—to the startling realization that we stand unveiled before family, friends, or maybe even God. We can find ourselves enveloped in gratitude, clothed by meekness. The masks we were so certain were necessary, the act we put on to appease the crowd, the lies we told to protect ourselves were maybe not quite as necessary as we thought. Could you take off the costume you thought you were wearing if you realized you were only wearing it for yourself?

Perhaps Paul’s instruction to “put off falsehood” is sometimes a call to “put off” what is not even there. The call of Christ is no different. He calls us unto himself and requires that we give him everything, but asks that we come without costume or pretense. We must come as much ready to be honest with ourselves as with him. In the journey of the Christian pilgrim, we walk with Christ toward the cross through crowds of sheep following blindly, and like the disciples on the road to Emmaus our eyes are opened to our own blind and deceived ways. It is as if Jesus himself is a mirror and we are inspecting our new clothes. But he will take from our shoulders our robes of self-importance and false security. He will tear from our grasp our garments of self-pity and shame. Then he will clothe us with garments of salvation and array us in robes of righteousness, and he will show us that we have been made new.

Jill Carattini is managing editor of A Slice of Infinity at Ravi Zacharias International Ministries in Atlanta, Georgia.

In his book River Out of a Eden, Oxford scientist Richard Dawkins explains, “The universe we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is, at bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil and no good, nothing but blind, pitiless indifference.”(1) In a similar vein, Dawkins praises the humorous rejoinder of Douglas Adams to arguments that claim an apparent order and purpose in the universe. Writes Dawkins, “To illustrate the vain conceit that the universe must be somehow preordained for us because we are so well suited to live in it, [Adams] mimed a wonderfully funny imitation of a puddle of water, fitting itself snugly into a depression in the ground, the depression uncannily being exactly the same shape as the puddle.”(2) Their claim is clear: Humanity has adapted to a blind and indifferent universe like water to the shape of its container. It is perhaps a claim that at times lingers suggestively in desolate places of life and mind.

Ernest Gordon may, too, have at one time agreed. An officer of the British army during the Second World War, he was captured by the Japanese while at sea. At the age of 24, he was sent to work in the prison camp that would be constructing the Burma-Siam railroad.

For every mile of track, 393 men are said to have died. Wearing nothing but loincloths, they worked for hours in scorching temperatures, chopping their way through tangled jungles. Those who paused out of exhaustion were beaten to death by guards. Treated like animals, the prisoners became themselves like beasts trying to survive. Adapting to their harsh captivity, theft was as rampant as disease among them. Gordon himself eventually became so weak from illness that he was removed from the common camp and placed in the Death House. He describes his purposeless existence in that cruel and indifferent setting: “I was a prisoner of war, lying among the dead, waiting for the bodies to be carried away so that I might have more room.”(3)

Each night the Japanese guards would count the work tools before anyone was permitted to return to camp. One evening, when a shovel was found to be missing, a guard shouted relentlessly that the guilty man must present himself. When no one responded, he ordered callously, “All die! All die!” At this, a young man stepped forward, confessing to the theft, and was immediately killed before them.

The railroad prison camp by the River Kwai was a place where many could have observed in horror that “the universe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is, at bottom, no design, no purpose, no God watching over those in dire need of hope.” Like water conforming to the shape of its container, the captured men became like men fighting to survive, void of right and wrong, void of reverence for life, void of all meaning. Yet, amidst the stagnant waters of hatred and bitterness, something was astir.

After the incident with the shovel, upon returning to the camp, one of the guards discovered a mistake in their counting. There had never been a missing shovel. The young man that stepped forward was innocent; he had sacrificed his life to preserve the lives of his fellow inmates. After this incident, attitudes among the camp began to change dramatically. Instead of men in a detached game of survival of the fittest, they began to look out for each other. One of the men remembered the words of Scripture: “Greater love has no one than this, that he lay down his life for his friends.” Gordon, who once lay forgotten for dead, was slowly nursed back to health by fellow prisoners. Fully recovered, he eventually became a makeshift chaplain of the camp. When the prison was liberated in 1945–three years after his capture–Gordon entered seminary to become a minister of the message of Jesus Christ. “Faith thrives where there is no hope but God,” he later testified. How contrary to the words of Richard Dawkins.

The transformation in the men of the prison was so thoroughly unlike the world they were forced to live in that one could argue it was more like a waterfall defying gravity and moving upstream than a puddle naturally fitting into the crevice that holds it. The sacrifice of one innocent man can reverse the flow of history. Perhaps the kingdom of God is indeed among us, a spring of living water in a dry and weary land.

Jill Carattini is managing editor of A Slice of Infinity at Ravi Zacharias International Ministries in Atlanta, Georgia.

(1) Richard Dawkins, River Out of Eden (New York: Basic Books, 1995), 133.

(2) As printed in The Guardian, May 14, 2001.

(3) Ernest Gordon, To End All Wars (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1963).

There are days when I wonder what it would be like to be a physician or a photojournalist or a museum curator. These are almost always days that coincide with the feeling that I’m not quite cutting it as a writer. There are probably men and women who always feel they are capable of the task before them. There are probably those who never feel as though the demands of vocation and their supply of talent are at odds. There are perhaps those among us who work and never grow weary—despite result or outcome. But I suspect many of us feel otherwise. No one ever tells you on career day that the glove may fit, but the work of your hands will still cause callouses.

Not long ago, I was reading about the making of the tabernacle; in Hebrew the word is mishkan, which means ‘dwelling place’ or ‘residence.’ The instructions given to Moses for the dwelling place they were to make for God were quite explicit, and excellence was clearly expected. The work of “a skilled craftsperson” was demanded for everything from the curtains and the woodwork to the oil and the incense. Much of the book of Exodus, in fact, reads like an employee manual or a progress report in which “every skilled person to whom the LORD has given skill and ability” labors to do the work and completes each task just as the LORD commanded.

In a moment of defeat, such a vision might make us feel all the more inadequate. The work of these skilled craftspeople appears everywhere, with no mention of deficiency, doubt, or difficulty: “For the entrance to the tent, they made a curtain of blue, purple, and scarlet yarn and finely twisted linen—the work of a fine embroiderer.”(1) “They also made the sacred anointing oil and the pure, fragrant incense—the work of a fine perfumer.“(2) “They hammered out thin sheets of gold and cut strands to be worked into the blue, purple and scarlet yarn and fine linen—the work of a skilled craftsman.“(3) In the end, the various craftspeople of Israel walk away from their work knowing they had done well. Everything they set out to accomplish was completed exactly as the LORD had commanded.

Hopefully there are days when this can be said of the work of our hands—that we are skilled and at work in ways that seem right and meaningful and accomplished. Whether one thinks of themselves as religious or not, vocation can hold a sense of purpose and design, a sense that we are doing what we were created to do. For the Christian, vocation often includes a sense of call, a desire to work as God would have them work, to be men and women using the skills and abilities God has given. Yet, despite the language we use, chances are this sense of purposeful skill and accomplishment isn’t the case with every thing we do. We may very well labor with the skills we were born to use, and yet be without the affirmation that it was completed exactly as it could have been—or as God wanted. We may even walk away with a sense of defeat, the fatigue of calloused hands, or the complaint of unclear instruction. Yet perhaps for good reason, it is not always God’s way to make clear the weight of our labor.

In his letter to the Corinthians, Paul explains: “For we are God’s servants, working together; you are God’s field, God’s building. According to the grace of God given to me, like a skilled master builder I laid a foundation, and someone else is building on it. Each builder must choose with care how to build on it” (1 Corinthians 3:9-10). Paul describes the labor of Christ followers as work that is undergirded by a builder whose plans we don’t yet see. Nonetheless, we are called to build carefully and creatively and to labor well. It is reminiscent of the line in C.S. Lewis’s Perelandra: “One never can see, or not till long afterwards, why any one was selected for any job. And when one does, it is usually some reason that leaves no room for vanity. Certainly, it is never for what the man himself would have regarded as his chief qualifications.”(4)

Standing before the completed tabernacle, Moses inspected the work and saw that they had done it just as the LORD had commanded. So he blessed them and then set to work himself. When Moses finished everything God had instructed of him and all the labor was finished on the tabernacle, the completed work of the skilled craftspeople was transfigured by the arrival of God’s glory: “Then the cloud covered the Tent of Meeting, and the glory of the LORD filled the tabernacle.”(5) The work of our hands has no better end.

Jill Carattini is managing editor of A Slice of Infinity at Ravi Zacharias International Ministries in Atlanta, Georgia.

(1) Exodus 36:37.

(2) Exodus 37:29.

(3) Exodus 39:3.

(4) C.S. Lewis, Perelandra (New York: Scribner, 1972), 22.

(5) Exodus 40:34.

We typically fill our parties with people similar to ourselves. We invite into our homes those we work with, play with, or otherwise have something in common with. We celebrate with fellow graduates, entertain people from our neighborhoods, and open our doors to four year-olds when our own is turning four. Psychologists concur: we socialize with those in our circles because we have some ring of similarity that connects us.

The man in the parable of the great banquet is no different. The story is told in Luke chapter 14 of an affluent master of ceremonies who had invited a great number of people like himself to a meal. The list was likely distinguished; the guests were no doubt as prosperous socially as they were financially. Jesus sets the story at a critical time for all involved. The invitations had long been sent out and accepted. Places were now set; the table was now prepared. All was ready. Accordingly, the owner of the house sent his servant to bring in the guests. But none would come.

Anthropologists characterize the culture of Jesus’s day as an “honor/shame” society, where one’s quality of life was directly affected by the amount of honor or shame socially attributed to him or her. The public eye was paramount; every interaction either furthered or diminished one’s standing, honor, and regard in the eyes of the world.

Thus, in this parable, the master of the banquet had just been deliberately and publicly shamed. He was pushed to the margins of society and treated with the force of contempt. Hearers of this parable would have been waiting with baited breath to hear how this man would attempt to reclaim his honor. But scandalously, in fact, the master of the feast did not attempt to reverse his public shame. Altogether curiously, he embraced it.

Turning to the slave, the owner of the house appointed the servant with a new task: “Go out quickly into the streets and lanes of the city, and the poor and maimed and lame and blind bring in here.”(1) Returning, the servant reported, “Lord it has all occurred as you ordered, and still there is room.” So the owner of the house responded again, “Go out into the waves and hedges and compel them to come in, that my house may be filled.”

The slave is told to do what he must to compel the masses to come, liberating the blind, the lame, and the excluded of their social status and stigma with an invitation to dine with none other than the master. It is a staggering portrayal of a God who is shamed by the rejection of his people, and yet continues to respond with lavish grace and scandalous invitation into his presence. The owner of the house has opened wide the doors. The feast is ready—and there is yet room.

The longing to belong in the right circles is a desire that touches us all. Even so, one only has to watch a group of kids on playground to see how easily our desire to belong is corrupted by our need to exclude: the inner circle is not inner if there are no outsiders. Lines of honor and shame are futile if the majority is not on the wrong side. But in this story, God scandalously breaks these lines of demarcation and stratification. The Father forever challenges the notion that his house will be filled only with the rich or the righteous or those without shame.

The banquet is ready and there is a call to fill the house with the lost and unworthy, the homeless, the blind, the outsiders and the out-of-place. The invitation Jesus presents is wide enough to scour the darkest of hedges and the depths of the city streets. Whether we find ourselves outside of the circle because we have rejected him or at the table communing with his guests, it is a thought to digest: the kingdom of God is like a great banquet. God’s compulsion is our nourishment. The feast is ready and there is still room.

Jill Carattini is managing editor of A Slice of Infinity at Ravi Zacharias International Ministries in Atlanta, Georgia.

(1) Luke 14:21.

The massive Rembrandt measures over eight and a half feet tall and six and a half feet wide, compelling viewers with a larger than life scene. “The Return of the Prodigal Son” hangs on the walls of the St. Petersburg Hermitage Museum depicting Christian mercy, according to one curator, as if it were Rembrandt’s last “spiritual testament to the world.” Fittingly, it is one of the last paintings the artist ever completed and remains one of his most loved works.

The painting portrays the reunion of the wayward son and the waiting father as told in the Gospel of Luke. The elderly father is shown leaning in an embrace of his kneeling son in ragged shoes and torn clothes. With his back toward us, the son faces the father, his head bowed in regret. Clearly, it is the father Rembrandt wants us most to see. The aged man reaches out with both hands, his eyes on the son, his entire body inclining toward him.

It is understandable that viewers have spent hours looking at this solemn reflection of mercy and homecoming. The artist slows unstill minds to a scene where the parable’s characters are powerfully still. The kneeling son leans silently toward the father; the father calmly and tenderly leans toward the son. All is at rest. But in fact, this is far from the scene Jesus portrays in the parable itself.

The parable of the prodigal son is a long way from restful, and the father within it is anything but solemn and docile in his embrace of the wayward son. In the story Jesus tells, while the son was “still a long way off,” the father saw him and “was filled with compassion for him” (Luke 15:20). This father was literally moved by his compassion. The Greek word conveys an inward movement of concern and mercy, but this man was also clearly moved outwardly. The text is full of dramatic action. The father runs to the son, embraces him (literally, “falls upon his neck”), and kisses him. Unlike the depiction of Rembrandt, Jesus describes a scene far more abrupt and shocking. It is not the son who we find kneeling in this picture, but the father. The characters are not at rest but in radical motion. The father who runs to his wayward son runs without any assurance of repentance; he runs without any promise that the son is even home to stay.

There is a line in Jewish tradition that would likely have entered the minds of the first hearers of this parable. According to ancient thought, the manner of a person’s walk “shows what he is.”(1) Dignified men in this ancient culture simply did not run. In order to do so, long robes would have had to be lifted up, exposing the legs, which was inherently shameful. And yet, this father runs to the son who blatantly disrespected him, and hurriedly embraces the one who once disowned him. This man’s “walk” shows a substance that is nothing less than staggering. All measures of decorum, all levels of expectation, all rules of honor and shame are simply shattered by this father’s love. It would no doubt have been a disruptive picture for the audience who first heard the parable; it remains a disruptive picture today.

The portrait Jesus offers of the Father is one of action and immediacy. The image of any father running to meet the child who had made a mess of her life is compelling. But that it was so outlandish in this ancient context makes this depiction of his love all the more stirring. It brings to the forefront an image of God as one who is willing to embrace shame on our account. It brings to mind the image of a Son who endured the cross, scorning its shame, that we would not grow weary and lose heart.

God is moving toward us with a walk that thoroughly counters any thought of a distant and absent Father and boldly confronts any move away from Him. In his radical approach of our hearts, the Father reveals who He is. However far we wander, the God who laments even one lost soul is waiting and ready for our return. More than this, He is the Father who runs to close the distance.

Jill Carattini is managing editor of A Slice of Infinity at Ravi Zacharias International Ministries in Atlanta, Georgia.

(1) Arland Hultgren, The Parables of Jesus (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans Publishing, 2000), 78.