The experience of God is found, entered into, through losing and finding. And this experience of joy discovered in the finding is God. God is the joy. This is taken further in the third parable of the Prodigal Son (Lk 15:11-32).
There was once a man who had two sons. And the younger said to his father, ‘Give me my share of the property.’ So he divided his estate between them. A few days later the younger son turned the whole of his share into cash and left home for a distant country, where he squandered it in dissolute living.
What does this tell us about the father? What do we know so far about the father? He gave him his freedom. Obviously the father in this story is a symbol, a metaphor for God. God isn’t controlling, in the ordinary sense of the word. This is the first sense that we have that God is love – ‘you are my son, you are old enough to know what to do; you are a human being, you’re not a puppet.’
