extravagant waste

My computer died on Friday :(

I was walking home from work and it suddenly began pouring like I've never seen before. I was literally trudging home soaking wet, my jeans sticking to my legs, ankle-deep in floodwater everywhere. I checked to make sure my backpack was keeping all the things in my backpack dry as I took cover briefly at the Penn bookstore (it was) but somehow by the time I got home (less than 10 min later) water had seeped into my backpack past my laptop protective case and into the laptop itself. I hoped I could save it, but after I got a $100 diagnosis by an Apple care provider, they told me the damage would cost $900 to fix. So I'm getting a new laptop and I'm beating myself up for my stupidity. If only I had thought to wrap my laptop up in a plastic bag or put it inside my jacket, I wouldn't need to pay another $1000 (basically everything I've earned so far this summer at work..) to buy another laptop barely a year after my first (which was supposed to last me four years >.>). Sighhh.. It's just such a waste of money to pay for my idiocy and I really really hate being wasteful.

But it reminded me of a sermon I heard about the parable of the prodigal son. It was the first time I had ever heard the true definition of "prodigal". I had always assumed (from the context of the parable) that it meant "returning after going astray". But what it really means is "wasteful, extravagant". The pastor then went on to explain that in the parable, it is not only the son who is "prodigal", but that the Father represents a Prodigal God as well (he took points from Tim Keller's book, The Prodigal God). God's love is extravagant for us, but so wasteful if you think about it. Why would God love us so much when we can't give Him back anything of worth? In a profits-and-returns point of view, that's a waste of an investment. But fortunately for us, God doesn't think of what He can receive in return, but rather pours out His love on us extravagantly. He didn't hold back anything from us but offered Himself to us through Jesus, inviting us to have intimate fellowship with Him, calling us to run into His arms and spend eternity with Him. For Him, this is the most extravagant waste conceivable; for us, it is the most precious gift.