Come Home, Son
You’ve wandered long enough, far enough. It’s time to come home.
Have you found what you sought?
What was it, anyway?
What drew you away from your Father’s house?
What induced you to demand what was “yours,” as if you had earned it by your own hard labor, or deserved the patrimony that would come to you by my free gift?
What lured you away from my steady love, my protection, provision and care?
Did you want to make a name for yourself – like the builders of Babel?
Did you think that the delights of this ephemeral world satisfy the hunger and thirst of your immortal soul?
Or were you just restless, driven, impelled to leave me, launch out on your own, perhaps even find yourself somewhere else?
Are you content? Happy?
How well do your erstwhile “friends” now like – not to mention love – you, now that your resources are expended and you have nothing left to give them?
Did you find what you were looking for in these companions in comfort, comrades in carousing, cohorts in crime?
You’re starving, I know, longing to eat one of the husks you feed the unclean swine of your stingy boss.
But would they stop the gnawing in your stomach?
You are coming to yourself; I see it from afar.
You know what I have to offer you, but you don’t know (yet) that it is yours to have – for free.
You are on the road, walking, now running.
I see your anxious look, know your doubting heart – will your Father yet take you back?
Your longing meets mine. I cast off my dignity and race towards you, arms outstretched.
“I am not worthy…”
“Hush, child. You are home. I am yours.
Welcome home, son.”
On reading Leighton Ford’s The Attentive Life.