“Consider the kind of extravagant love the Father has lavished on us—He calls us children of God! It’s true; we are His beloved children” (1 John 3:1a).

Don’t rush past this like I’ve done all these years. Take it in slowly and savor what you’re reading.

This Father, the King of the Universe, has LAVISHED his love on us.

I can’t help but thinking of a chapter I read in a book called The Autobiography of God by Lloyd John Ogilvie. The very first chapter is called The Prodigal God, about the parable of the prodigal son.

In it, Ogilvie defines prodigality as that of being extravagant, excessive, and wasteful. He says the character in that parable that best fits the description of prodigal is the father.

The father is the one who had every right after his son left home to hold a mock funeral and to live as though he had only one son. He could very well have written his son off the way his son had written him off.

But that’s not what happened.

I imagine that father waited every day in the same spot on that front porch, looking out into the horizon for any sign of his son.

I know for a fact that the father RAN (something dignified men NEVER did back in that day and age). The father fell on his son’s neck and lavished him with fatherly kisses and affection.

This was my son who was dead, he said, and is now alive.

That’s the picture of the extravagant kind of love the Heavenly Father lavishes on us. It’s that excessive. It’s that wasteful when you consider how many of us ignore it or take it for granted (and I am one of those).

The Father is running after you, not to scold or punish you, but to envelop you in His arms and tell you right now that He loves you just the way you are, soot-covered, shame-covered, sin-covered, but He in His love refuses to leave you the way He found you.

He wants you to be living out of the full knowledge that you are a son, a daughter, a child of God.