A couple of years back, a daily reading from Ransomed Heart, now Wild At Heart, inspired me to write this story and the prayer that follows.
Imagine if you will a city in a setting like Game of Thrones or Ancient Rome. A city where the houses line narrow streets wide enough for about ten men abreast to pass. The streets are crowded. They are lined with beggars and orphans. Passing through the streets are men and women from every walk of life and rank of society. In the streets, the orphans run alongside the rich begging for alms. They are unashamed for they have nothing to lose. At night, the orphans huddle together for warmth and comfort once the city inhabitants have retreated to their homes. The orphans sit together staring into the homes of the rich with wide bulging eyes gazing upon the feasts that have been prepared and the festivities inside. The smells of the kitchens fill the streets. If only the odor provided nourishment. The dinner scene in the movie Hook comes to mind in which the Lost Boys imagine the meal into reality.
There is no meal though for the orphans of my story. Despite their longing, desire and hope, there is a quiet despair within their hearts. Deep down they know that they do not belong. They know that they will never be a part of the household let alone welcomed in for a single meal. Some have given themselves over to despair. Some still cling to the tiniest bits of hope believing that maybe someday they will be welcomed in. All go hungry. They find comfort that even though they will never belong to the household they belong to each other. They are brothers. They have each other if no one else or nothing else. Their place is the street.
In the house is the servant. He belongs to the house. He is property of the house. His presence is required, but he is not a part of the family. Summoned by the Master, he presents himself promptly. The Master is good and just, yet the servant fears him for he has the power to beat him or sell him or kill him. He serves at the Master’s pleasure and whim. He comes and goes from the house as ordered by the Master carrying out his duties and responsibilities. He does not know the Master’s heart. He knows only that which he has been commanded. He enters and exits from the back of the house using the servant’s entrance. He keeps careful account of his day should he be questioned. He wears no chain, but he is far from free. He is property. Unlike the orphan relegated to seeing and smelling the feast from afar, the servant is there in the room but is not there to partake. He is there to serve. The feast is not for him. He will never be welcomed to the table. He comes and goes from the room as ordered and as the needs of the diners require. Once the meal is finished, the servant lingers cleaning up. It is his duty. Nothing of the feast, not even the leftovers, is for the servant.
Then there is the son. The son comes and goes from the house as he pleases. Servants open the door for him the moment they see him least he be kept waiting. Sometimes he is going about his own business. Sometimes he tends to an errand for his father. The son does not belong to the streets or to the house. The house and all therein belong to him. It is his birthright. He enters the dining hall dressed not in the rags of the orphan or the garments of a servant. He enters dressed in the robes of a son having been dressed by the servants. His every need attended to by the servants. The son and his father embrace when the son enters the dining hall. The son is home. The son is where he belongs. All is right in the world. The son moves to the chair that is his and his alone. The servants pull it back for him to sit. They handle it carefully and with respect for it is the chair that belongs to the son of the Master. No one sits in the son’s chair. No one. It is his and his alone. If he does not sit in it, it is left empty. A reminder that one who belongs is absent. As the meal progresses, the son is a part of the occasion. He feasts and dines. The meal is, after all, in part to honor him. As the meal ends, the son and the father recline in their respective chairs. They discuss the things upon a father’s heart and a son’s heart. Maybe they retire to a courtyard for the privacy it affords. Late into the evening, the son retires to his bedroom. His bedroom. The father lingers lost in his own thoughts delighting in the evening. The moment that was. The father then retires, but before he does, he secures the house. The father ensures that all is in order. He assumes that the servants are in their quarters and does not give them the dignity of a second thought. The father does, however, step into the son’s bedroom. He gazes upon the face of his son resting in a deep peaceful sleep. The father remembers himself as a son. Quietly he exits. His son is sleeping. All is right with the world. The father retires for the night and sleeps well. His son is home.
That story still moves me to tears. Father and son together. Together and not apart. And all is right in the world. I have been the orphan for much of my life. Discarded. Discounted. Dismissed. Ignored. For the orphan sleeping in the street with his brothers, there is more to the story. One day, the father summons the son and commands him to seek out and find one specific orphan. David is his name. David Christopher. “Not much to look at, nothing posh. Nothing you’d call up to scratch. He is just outside the front door across the street waiting the for opportunity to beg."
The son finds him and brings him into the house. The boy is terrified. What has he done? What. Has. He. Done. He sits in a receiving room while the son finds his father. The orphan’s anxiety is palpable. Finally, the Master and the son enter the room. The orphan nervously shoots up out of his chair. He knows at least to stand and show respect. He dares not be disrespectful. The Master sets him at ease and the orphan hesitantly takes his seat again. The Master begins to speak. The orphan’s heart sinks. This is it. Here. It. Comes. But it is not what the orphan expected. Certainly, nothing he ever imagined. “Today, you are my son and I am your father. No more shall you sleep in the streets. No more shall you wear the rags of an orphan. You shall sleep under my roof in your own bed in your own room. You shall wear the robes of a son. You shall be a son. My son.” A son. The words echo deep through the boy’s heart like an undersea earthquake. The quake is not heard. It is not felt. There is however the tsunami. The orphan, now son, weeps. He and his father rise from their chairs and embrace. The first of many embraces to come. He smiles. His father is happy. There is joy for all. They are father and sons and brothers together.
Earlier today, I was pondering the idea of “brothers who desire to be sons”. Orphans are brothers but they are not sons. Sons, however, will always be brothers. The two are completely different mindsets. One is that which is real. The other simply a shadowy specter without substance. I see many who I long to call brother living on the streets as orphans or living in the house as servants. Others who have been adopted as sons but who have not yet come into the full depth and breadth of their birthright as sons. They still refer to the Most High as “Lord” when he is Father. The privilege and right to address the Most High as “Father”, to know him as father, is reserved for man and man alone. Angels will never know him as such. The son living as an orphan or servant still prays as one who has no agency, right or privilege. He does not pray as one to whom authority has been given. One to whom creation has been entrusted. He asks Jesus to do things that he has already been empowered to do. With every prayer, he denies his relationship as a son and his birthright. He comes into his father’s presence not as a son but as an orphan or a servant. He reaffirms the lie that he has not been adopted and embraced as a son. Our Father’s heart is that we walk as Kings and High King and Great High King together as father and sons and brothers. Ruling over his creation. Guarding it and keeping it. Yet there are many who have become sons who for all practical purposes live as orphans. Discarded. Discounted. Dismissed. Ignored. Along with a host of other adjectives. They sleep in the street across the door from the Master’s house, their father’s house, as if they are still orphans and that is their proper place, despite the servants standing at the door, holding it open, waiting for them to enter. Despite their father coming to their room to gaze upon them sleeping only to see the bed empty. They have believed one of many lies. “You are not really a son.” “It is not yet time for you to be a son.” “You will be a son, but you are not yet.” “Jesus was speaking of himself as a son, not of you.” There is a reason why the sons, no longer orphans, have been deceived. They are feared.
“The veiling shadow that glowers in the East takes shape. Sauron will suffer no rival. From the summit of Barad-dur his eye watches ceaselessly. But he is not so mighty yet that he is above fear. Doubt ever gnaws at him. The rumor has reached him. The heir of Numenor still lives. Sauron fears you, David Christopher. He fears what you may become.”
I believe that the deepest fear of the kingdom of darkness is the prospect of men and women coming into their birthright as sons and daughters. Evil saw and experienced firsthand what one son of God did in three and a half short years. And now, how many walk the Earth? What was the promise in John 14:12? And what does a son or daughter of God do? They proclaim freedom for the oppressed, healing for the brokenhearted and set the captives free. Thus, it is the chief goal of evil to keep the sons and daughters of God living as orphans. If not orphans, certainly as servants. Anything but the sons and daughters of God. Anything to keep them from taking the chair that is theirs and theirs alone. Anything to keep them living as orphans in the street.
A few weeks back the statement “sonship through brotherhood” came up in conversation with a buddy. Afterward, I thought that the statement was backwards. Everything arises from sonship. Everything is born of sonship. Everything. True brotherhood can only come forth when each man is a son living as a son. My buddy and I had been discussing ministries that develop the “five-year plan”. I questioned if their “planning” was nothing more than men deciding what they were going to do for the Kingdom of God apart from the counsel of the one under whom all things have been placed and to whom all authority has been given. My friend shared that the subject had now come up four separate times in the past week and he asked me my thoughts on it. On the spot, I responded that I think it always comes down to being a son. Living together as father and son. Day by day. Moment by moment. In retrospect, I realized that I had done, in part, what others had done to me so many decades ago. I provided technically correct information that was utterly useless. I had told my buddy what needed to be done (live as a son) but failed to comment on how one goes about it (being a son).
Several times in my young 20’s, I turned to fellow Christians for advice. They responded with statements such as “you need to find your identity in Christ” and “you’re not letting Christ sit on the throne of your heart”. What the hell does that mean? Thank you, but what am I supposed to do now? You have told me the problem, but you have not told me what to do about it. Over the past 30 years, those moments have occasionally come to mind as they do now. And so, I offer something practical for those sons living as orphans in the street sleeping across from the Father’s house. The house whose doors are held open by the servants because they see the son and expect him to enter at any moment. The house in which a chair sits empty as does a bed.
The prayer is simple.
“Father, I come into your presence your son. Dressed in the robes of a son and not the rags of the orphan or the garments of a slave. I acknowledge and accept that I am your son and that you are my father. I ask you and allow you to embrace me as your son and as my father. Come let us be father and son this day.”
And then the mancub discovered this cover of Bui Doi and fell in love with Miss Saigon and knew the title of this post.