the son's story

I don’t know if I ever told you about the time my Father ran.

Forgive me, I'm getting ahead of myself....

It’s probably worth starting the story from the beginning. 

It wasn’t that I didn’t like being on  my Father's estate, it was just that, well, I thought that maybe there was more out there than there was at home. I’d heard about the city and thought if I went there maybe I would find what I was looking for.
     So I went and spoke to my Father.

   “Father, give me my share of the estate.”

Looking back now I realize how callous it must have sounded. It was kind of like saying, “You’re going to die at some point, and when you do I’ll get my share of your estate, so why not just let me have it now?”

   He looked sad, but he agreed.

Within a few days I had turned the assets into cash- that’s a polite way of saying that I had sold off my share of the estate- I knew that I wasn’t actually allowed to do that, but I figured where I was going I was going to need all the cash that I could get my hands on.

   And then I was gone.   

It didn’t take me long to make new friends in the city. We’d meet and go and hang out. Maybe party a little. I don’t really remember when, but eventually that was all we did. At first I felt bad spending the money on partying, but then, well, I was having such a good time.

Looking back I did a lot of things that I am ashamed of now. Occasionally I would feel a pang of guilt. But I would tell myself that it wasn’t as if I was hurting anyone.
And then, before I knew it, the money was all gone. All of it. The whole lot. I had spent all of the money I made from my Fathers estate.

   And I was alone.

The famine that hit later on in the year was much worse than anyone anticipated. Friends didn’t return my calls and suddenly I was in the city on my own. No money, no friends and out of options.
   Eventually I managed to persuade someone to give me a job.

   Feeding pigs. 

You have no idea how humiliating that was. I had arrived in the city with big plans and an even larger wallet. And there I was, feeding pigs. It was kind of the ultimate insult. A respectable Jew like me feeding animals that were deemed to be unclean.More than that, no-one actually gave me any food to eat myself.

I don’t know if you have ever been so hungry that even if you were offered dog food you’d be up for it, but that was how hungry I was.

I kept thinking about my Father. Of how I had told him that I was going to go to the city and make something of myself. I thought about how disappointed he would be if he could see me there, having blown everything he had given me.

   And I missed him.   

I guess it’s only when you have lost everything that you realize how much you had. I thought of the people who worked for him. They were well looked after, they were well fed.
   So I decided to go home.

I’d love to say that the decision to go home was motivated by, well, pretty much anything other than the fact that the servants who worked at my Fathers estate were treated better.
   Maybe if I went home and said I was sorry he might let me work as a servant on the estate.   

   Maybe.

I spent the journey back home thinking about what I would say to him. I had this whole speech prepared. That was assuming that he would see me at all. I had blown everything that he had given me, I knew that word would probably have got back to him. He would be totally within his rights to slap me across the face, tell me that I was no longer his son, and send me packing. But by that stage anything was worth a try.The closer I got to home, the faster I could her my heart beating, until finally as I got to the gate I thought it was going to explode.

   And that’s when I saw him. 

   That’s when I saw my father run.

   Where I come from, men don’t run. It is deeply undignified. They do not show emotion publicly.

   And yet my Father was running. 

   Tears were in his eyes. He grabbed me and held me tight.

   “Father I. have sinned against heaven and against you”

    He didn’t give me the chance to finish.

   “My son, my son. You’re home.” he kept saying.

   It all happened so fast.

The family ring back on my finger. My fathers best robe . Shoes for my feet-something no servant would be given . The fattened calf that was meant to be saved for an honored guest.

   And a celebration.

   “My son, my son, you’re home” He kept saying to me, “You were dead, and now you are alive. You were lost, but now you are home again.”

   And I was.   

   I was home.   

   Jesus told people my story to show what God is really like.

You see, I think we get God wrong sometimes. When we mess up we think of him as this stren school teacher dressed in tweed sitting in a cold classroom shaking his head disapprovingly and telling us how we have let ourselves down. How he is very disappointed and expected better of us.

  But he isn’t like that at all.

   He is the father who forgives, who welcomes us home.

He is the Father who runs.

(C) Copyright Bill Cahusac 2007  All Rights Reserved.