The one thing all of us should be grateful for is that our God isn't fair. If God limited God's grace to only the deserving, I have a sneaky hunch that all of us would be out of luck. What Jesus taught, not just with his words but his life, was that God's love is available to all, to everyone. Not just to those who believe, think or act a certain way.

The prodigal father loves both his sons. What a shame the older brother doesn't realize the immense beauty in that. What a shame that the church doesn't often realize it as well.

Recently, I was told the most beautiful of stories. A woman described what it was like holding her first born child. Cradling him in her arms, she wondered how she could ever possibly love anything any more than she loved this child. Then she had another baby and suddenly she realized that her love grew even more vast!

Love isn't diminished when it is spread around. It grows! What a marvelous image of God's grace. It doesn't shrink. It grows! "My cup runneth over", the Psalmist sang. It didn't stop at the rim. It kept on coming to fill other cups that would fill other cups and on and on and on.

The church often speaks of two general categories of sin: Sins of Commission and Sins of Omission. The sins of commission most of us are pretty familiar with because we engage in them every day. If you don't think you do or don't know what they are, I suggest you set up an appointment for some spiritual counseling...and soon. But it is the sins of omission that are the more insidious and the less understood. These are the sins we allow by not doing something. When we neglect the needs of others, when we allow our selfishness to overwhelm our sense of generosity, when we pretend that God's love has limits, we commit sins of omission. When we fail to recognize that God's grace is all around us, when we act like that angry older brother and fail to see that we could be celebrating a party every day, when we think that God's love is limited to certain days or certain religions or certain people, we are guilty of sins of omission. That was what Jesus was showing the Pharisees back then and showing us right now.