By Melodious Monk
I revert to old patterns of projecting God’s reaction from the place of my failure. That is my repeated experience of trying to return home. – Henri Nouwen from Home Tonight
Isn’t this pattern of projecting falsely God’s reactions so human? We do this all the time, projecting on our particular circumstances a human view that blinds us from seeing God’s true love. Since Adam and Eve hid in the garden, this has been our human choice. Perhaps there’s a new pattern we can use to project for ourselves more truly the nature of God, for inside each of us is a piece of God’s image. As the Prodigal Son learned in the parable, we too can learn by continually leaving and returning, that God is always waiting for us. We can look through the healed part of our natures, past the failures, to the glorious hope we have in returning home to live with the creator, fully alive. No matter what has happened, He waits — and God always meets us with a brand new place of love.