Prodigal: Wow long time since I have seen you!
Me: Yes, it has been too long. I have just been busy here and there and everywhere. I do like your castle though.
Prodigal: Yes my friend owns it and is letting me stay here for the end of summer vacation.
Me: What a nice friend! You look like to are living in luxury and that reminds me of a story about a king.
Prodigal: Please share, I am all ears.
This story is from Kierkegaard and it begins the following way.
Suppose there was a King who loved a humble maiden. The king was like no other king. Every statesman trembled before his power. No one dared breather a word against him, for he had the strength to crush all opponents And yet this mighty king was melted by love for a humble maiden.
How could he declare his love for her? In an odd sort of way, his very kingliness tied his hands. If he brought her to the palace and crowed her head with jewels and clothed her body in royal robes, she would surely not resist–no one dared resist him. But would she love him?
She would say she loved him , of course, but would she truly? Or would she live with him in fear, nursing a private grief for the life she had left behind. Would she be happy at his side? How could he know?
If he rode to her forest cottage in his royal carriage, with an armed escort waving bright banners, that too would overwhelm her. He did not want a cringing subject. He wanted a lover, an equal. He wanted her to forget that he was a king and she a humble maiden and to let shared love cross over the gulf between them.
The king, convinced he could not elevate the maiden without crushing her freedom, resolved to descend. He clothed himself as a beggar and approached her cottage incognito, with a worn cloak fluttering loosely about him. It was no mere disguise, but a new identity he took on. He renounced the throne to win her hand. For it is only in love that the unequal can be made equal concluded Kierkegaard.
What Kierkegaard expressed in this story format is what the apostle Paul wrote long ago. Who, being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be grasped, but made himself nothing, taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness. And being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself and became obedient to death even death on a cross.
When we think of Jesus who came to us and humbled himself. That is the ultimate love and I ask that we take a minute and really express out thanks that he has made that sacrifice of love for us today!
Jennifer Van Allen,
www.theprodigalpig.com
www.faithincounseling.org
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