He forgives and restores

Judges 17 contains an odd little story.

It starts with a woman cursing a thief because someone has stolen a significant sum of money from her. The curse is so bad that her son feels terrible and decides to confess to stealing the money - he doesn't want that curse on his head! Then the mother praises her son for returning it.
I don't think the situation would be the same if the thief was a stranger or a neighbour even. The woman seems to forgive her son and even uses some of the money to give him a gift.

It's an odd story, I don't know if I'd react the same as the woman. She has lost a considerable amount of money through a their, and she is rightly annoyed about it. When the thief turns out to be her own son, she blesses him for returning the cash. He's only returned the cash because he doesn't want the curse though - there's nothing to do with repentance. He doesn't say sorry or anything, he just tells his Mum that he did it.

It's an odd story because although I don't agree with the morals both of these people exhibit, I can see a strong example of love within it.
The relationship between this mother and son displays love. The mother forgives her son and even returns some of the cash to him in the form of a gift. There no question that a thief would of been punished, but a son is forgiven.

This correlates to how God receives us. We do all sorts of wrong towards God, we disobey him, we ignore him and we are horrid to those around us - who are his family. Yet, God welcomes us into his home, he continues to call us sons and daughters. He knows we mess up, but his heart is big enough to cover over our wrongs because of Jesus. We are part of God's family if we believe that Jesus died for our sins. It's only then that we can know true freedom because we don't need to carry the weight of the stuff we do wrong around with us. God forgives and restores us. Like the woman forgave her son and continued her relationship with him - even blessing him in the process.

God does the same for us. He forgives and he restores.