The God Who Runs to Meet You
We sometimes imagine God as a stern judge with a folder of incriminating evidence. But the parable of the prodigal son shatters that stereotype.
The parable of the prodigal son – that is where all my hope of salvation lives. The other parables do not give me that hope. I did not multiply the talents. The seeds thrown onto the soil of my stony heart produced no shoots. I have not stored up the oil of the wise virgins either.
The parable of the prodigal son makes the heart weep with joy: God is not seated on a throne, waiting for an official petition for clemency – He springs up and runs to meet you. He is ready to set aside all His majesty, His cosmic status, and be the first to throw His arms around the repentant sinner.
The devil’s supermarket
How did we end up leaving the Father’s house? Step by step we chose “to have” instead of “to be.” We let go of His hand so we could reach for a bright toy in the display window of the devil’s supermarket. We walked farther and farther away whenever we chose the sweetness of sin, whenever we built – out of the sand of vanity and pride – our own small world, sealed off from the world of the Father.
But sooner or later a moment comes when the world for which we abandoned the Father turns its true face toward us – the face of cold indifference.
And we understand: we are not needed here. In the system we live in, each of us is merely a resource. Once there is nothing more to extract from us, we will be thrown onto the trash heap like useless junk. A world built on consumption is indifferent to the person. When you cease to be useful, solvent, convenient, you cease to exist for it. Death arrives while the body is still breathing. You become nothing but a mouth that wants to eat – and even the pigs’ feed is not meant for you.
But worse than physical hunger is ontological hunger – the aching thirst for meaning that cannot be bought. Why did I live? Why did I save, build, study? So that time, with its ruthless sledgehammer, could smash all of it to pieces along with my disintegrating body? So that later someone else might build their little happiness out of these ashes – a happiness that will also turn to ash?
A prosecutor’s spyglass
The sooner longing for the Father’s house ignites in the heart, the greater the chance we will make it there in time. But the moment the swineherd – the devil – senses this resolve in us, he begins at once to argue us out of it.
He will say: “Are you an idiot? Don’t you understand what awaits you? You think you’ll get away with all this so easily? Your Father saw everything. He has a great spyglass, and He’s been watching you the whole time. He has informants everywhere, writing down every one of your sins and stitching those records into countless volumes. Your Father will throw you into the chains of everlasting darkness, and your suffering will never end. So stay here and enjoy yourself while you can – you’ll still have time to take your place in hell.”
The scent of home
But when the pigs become so unbearable that even death begins to look desirable, the son finally decides to go. Perhaps because he remembered the Father’s hands – hands that smelled like home. Perhaps because he often dreamed of how, long ago in childhood, the Father would toss him up into the air, catch him, and they would laugh together. However it happened, the son decided to walk.
On the road he prepared a speech. He rehearsed it so he would not stumble and could say everything before a gag was forced into his mouth and handcuffs were snapped onto his wrists. At first he wanted to explain himself – why he left, who pushed him, how circumstances turned out the way they did. But then he realized he would never have time to say it all, and he chose to be as brief as possible: “I am not worthy to be called your son; receive me as one of your hired servants.”
For a long time he still heard, behind him, hellish laughter. A cry flew after him like an echo: “Fool! Darkness and the grinding of teeth are waiting for you!” But he kept walking. Better darkness than life in that accursed country.
The hush of the meeting
As he approached, on legs trembling with fear, the borders of the Father’s estate, he saw the Father running toward him. The son shrank back in terror, squeezed his eyes shut, waiting for the Father’s fists to begin mercilessly beating his face – a face mutilated by sin. In a shaking voice he began to stammer that he was “not worthy to be called…” when suddenly he felt himself inside the Father’s warm embrace…
A hush fell. Everything stood still.
The air smelled of milk and honey, and the heady fragrance of lilac. Somewhere nearby a nightingale launched into its song. Out of nowhere a purring cat appeared and began to rub against his legs. The son and the Father stood there and wept, holding one another. The son tried once more to recite the memorized words, but the Father laid His palm over his mouth, wiping away his tears. In His gaze there was not a shadow of reproach – only deep compassion and quiet joy. The son had returned. And only later, when the tears had dried, the Father softly said: “My child, if only you knew how long I have been waiting for you.”
In the Father’s embrace the past sank and disappeared. Only His endless, incomprehensible, boundless, all-forgiving, all-consuming love remained.
In the fire of that love every sin burned away, all the grime that had accumulated through years of separation. That fire sank into the deepest places of the heart, into the hidden corners where the son had stored his most shameful deeds.
Now nothing hurt there. The stench of the pigsty vanished. In the Father’s embrace the son began to smell of fresh bread and summer rain – the scent of a life that will never end. And what had been before? A nightmare, a lie, a delusion.
A vulnerable God
The loving Father in this parable is the God I have loved and sought my whole life. He is the Father in whose house my childhood still lives. There is sunlight there, a star-filled sky, the smell of hay and wildflowers. In that house I once walked barefoot through morning dew, raced gleefully down a hill on my bicycle. This is the home I want to return to. God lives there – the God I miss so painfully.
And He is nothing like the despotic judge the devil paints for us. He is a loving Father who stands by the road and peers into the horizon, hoping to catch sight of his son’s silhouette.
He is a vulnerable God, wounded by our leaving. A God in whose embrace you want to drown. He does not want our slavery; He does not need our fear. He wants our love in return. He is ready to run to meet us, breaking every rule of divine “respectability.”
Royal children
Something dreadful has happened to us: we have forgotten that each of us is a royal son and a royal daughter. No matter how much we want to be God’s slaves or hired hands, our Father will never agree to that. He will always see us as His children, and He will not accept anything less.
We are royal children. We are not identical with our sins and falls. My sin, my swinishness – that is not my “I.”
We are awaited at home – not so that someone may tally up our sins and pronounce a verdict, but so that a ring may be placed on our finger and royal garments thrown over our shoulders.
Our Father waits… He looks for us in a child’s smile, in the blaze of sunset, in the scattering of stars across the night sky. He taps at our window with raindrops, reminds us of Himself in birdsong, in the sound of the sea, in the scent of apples. He waits – and is ready to wait for us even an eternity – if only we would come to ourselves from the drunken stupor in which our lives are passing, and finally return home.
