Prodigal Auction

My daughter came to me on Saturday evening, and put a paper in my hand saying “#### asked me to give you this”.

It was a letter from my 14 year old son.

In it he confessed that he had mindlessly put a bid on a famous auction website for a car, and against his expectations, he had won, and was now liable for money well in excess of his funds. Plus, it would be very inconvenient to fetch the said car in another town. It was a very self-deprecating letter, full of genuine grief and remorse as well as panic for his situation. He did not expert forgiveness, but offered to pay what he could in pocket money and by handing over his computer.

I was reeling with the impact of the whole thing and taken aback by the fact that I was now going to have to stump up the cash. But mostly, I felt sad for him, hiding in his basement bedroom, worked up into such a state of self-loathing that he felt he had to send his sister with a letter, rather than face me himself. It hurt me that he called himself “a screw-up of a son”.

I consulted with my wife, and we agreed the problem had three aspects:

• Re-affirmation of our son
• Careful discipline of our son
• Resolving the problem of the car

The discipline was relatively easy – it didn’t need anything heavy handed. We have been telling him for months he is not allowed a computer in his bedroom – now we could enforce that rule.

Re the car, we felt there was a binding contract and we would have to buy it with borrowed money, but then sell it straightaway to recover as much as we could.

Time for re-affirmation. I couldn’t go down to him straightaway – other kids going to bed, incoming phone calls, etc - but at the first break I went down, and found him flushed in the face and full of tears. (This is the rough tough footballing son.) I explained I would take the burden of dealing with the car, and that we would move his computer out, but mostly that the self-deprecating aspect of his letter was out of place for a son of God, a valued one for whom Christ died, and a son that made me proud. I could not shout – I could only hug him. And he received the hug, which normally he would not.

Cutting a long story short, we contacted the vendor and explained the situation. He was very understanding, and agreed to ‘mutually withdraw’ – which I hadn’t realised you could do on the auction website. All we had to do was refund him his listing fee, a small amount which my son agreed to pay.

The phrase ‘cutting a long story short’ includes all the prayer! Prayer which was answered.

So there we have it – a living prodigal son, a living parable of the undeserving who is loved not because of what he does but because of who he is (the son of the father), and whose repentance opens the floodgates of forgiveness.