Boldly I Approach

When I listen to this song, I see Jesus’ parable of the Prodigal or Lost Son (Luke 15: 11-32) in my mind. The parable of a son who was deeply loved from his beginning and yet he wanted to make it on his own. And so leaves home and his father’s presence and invests his time and money in the distractions of our world. Our distractions might be different but we have all most likely sought distraction at some point(s) and tried to go it on our own. While we may or may not have experienced this for such a defined period as the son but we will most likely experience these distractions for minutes, hours or weeks in our lives. When the son comes to see that the world is fickle and that his pursuit of pleasure could not provide lasting joy, he decides to return home and ask forgiveness from his father. He will ask to return not as a son but as a servant. He was humbled and overwhelmed by his sin and bad decisions. From a human perspective, that would seem like a sensible and deserved solution. And yet, the story doesn’t end there! When the son is in sight of home he sees his father running to meet him. Does he deserve it? No but that’s the gospel. The older son points out that hisfaithfulness is much more deserving of celebration. This response might seem logical from the world’s perspective yet God’s love doesn’t have to fit the world’s logic. God is big enough to be able to love each of us equally, as individuals on our own journeys. So let us cling to this truth as written in the Bible, for we were loved when we were still sinners. And so, if we know and trust in this truth, we can sing ‘Boldly I approach your throne, Blameless now I’m running home’. We can sing this for the blood of Jesus, his sacrifice on the cross. That he would die the loneliest death in creation to bring us home is love unlike anything else this world can offer. And the thing is that even when we are saved we will still mess up and look for comfort in other places but let’s remember that our God ‘fights for me, And shields my soul eternally’. We may repeat the pattern of the prodigal son many times in our lives but we should know that we can return each time to ask forgiveness and be ‘welcomed as His own, into the arms of majesty’ - Siobhan de Jonge