Friday 18 November 2011

Treated with contempt

How often do we hear that phrase - treating something or someone with contempt? In the present age many things are treated this way by many of us, authority, relationships or partners, parents, work, the police, even God.

If we are the object of someones contempt then we might well feel disrespected, disregarded, in effect of no value to that person. What if that person is someone that we love dearly, someone we have invested time and love into? How does it work that the object of that love should count us as nothing whatever?

We hear of it all of the time, children leaving their parents and not looking back, parents abandoning their children to find themselves or to grasp for relationship elsewhere.

The Exodus found God being treated with contempt by his people, God who had done so much for them has to put up with them moaning, disregarding his direction and considering him powerless and weak. Yet in the fact of Christ coming, we see something of God's real heart, the father of the wayward children comes to us himself, comes to those who have treated him with contempt, ignoring him among our busy and self focused lives. God has come to greet the prodigal, to offer us forgiveness and wholeness with him.

God doesn't walk away , didn't walk away from those who treat him with contempt, instead he offers his most precious gift, that we might learn to love him as he loves us.