A few hours of sleep a night might sound normal to you, but it wasn't for me.
I'd picked up a job labouring with a mate of mine over in Double Bay. After driving straight to the gym, I would shower and head to my other job as a barman in the city. By the time I got home and jumped into bed, it was practically time get up again for work.
Dad noticed me running the clock into the ground and he asked me about it one night on my way out of the house.
'Where are you going mate?' he asked.
'I'm going to work Dad' I replied, 'heading into the city.'
'You're working pretty hard, aren't you?' he commented. 'How many jobs have you got now?'
'Three,' I said. 'I'm working at the races on Saturday too.'
'I see' he said. 'Everything alright son?' he asked.
I didn't tell him then, but the following day I took a few extra seconds to sit down and come clean.
'I'm working the extra job to pay something off' I confessed. 'I've done something stupid and I've taken out a loan I can't afford. That's why I took the extra job, to pay it off as quickly as I can.'
'David, come and sit down for a minute, son.' Dad said the next afternoon when I walked in the door. I sat there looking at Dad, waiting. 'Mum and I are going to pay off the rest of your loan for you.'
'What?' I hadn't expected that.
So many times growing up I had heard, 'you have to learn that your decisions have consequences and if ever there was a time for that lesson, well this seemed as good as any—but grace? I wasn't expecting that.
'Really?' I managed. 'Far out. Thank you.'
I hugged Dad and he hugged me back and told me he loved me. 'Make sure you thank your Mother too' he said coolly.
Looking back, it is still one of the most generous, most liberating things anybody has ever done for me. Dad didn't have to pay my debt for me. There would have been value in teaching me that nothing comes easy by letting me work off my debt myself like I deserved.
But Dad wasn't as interested in what I deserved as the fact that I was his son and that I was in trouble. Dad didn't have to spend his hard-earned money bailing me out of a situation I had created, but he chose to. He wanted to teach me another lesson: his love for his children is unconditional. He wanted to show me I could ask for help when I needed it and he would be there for me.
What I didn't have the capacity to do on my own, Dad did for me. Overnight my debt was paid and I was square.
The Redemption Principle
This is The Redemption Principle: we get not what we deserve, but what we—by no virtue—inherit through sonship.
The same is true of another father. God our father who has set us free. Indeed he has redeemed us from a debt that we could never repay. Though we deserve to work and toil and struggle our whole lives, and still come up short, God has wiped the slate clean for all of us. He did it by sending his son, Jesus, to die on a cross.
Because of Jesus we have been set free.
We are square.
God wants us to know above all else, that he is a loving father, who desires to be in a real relationship with us, his children.
There is nothing we can do to pay God back. Indeed to try would be to miss the point of our redemption.
The only reasonable response is gratitude.
'For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life.'
- John chapter 3, verse 16.
David Luschwitz is lying on a beach somewhere in Spain right now but the gallivanting has to stop eventually. He flies back to Australia in August this year.
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David's previous articles can be found at http://www.pressserviceinternational.org/david-luschwitz.html