Homecoming

Everyone knows the great story in the Gospel of Luke about the prodigal child and for many it is an all time favorite. A rebellious son leaves home taking all of his money and a lot of his father's money as well to see what life was like in the big city. Like all young people he had high hopes of great adventures and of carving out a name for himself as he took off. He was so excited that he could taste it and his step had that extra bounce of energy and confidence because he was going to be a success. Absolutely.

No one knows for sure how it started... maybe with the loss of a job or a break-up with a girlfriend...then a little too much alcohol here and there...a drug or two to enhance the effects...a midnight visit to a prostitute to ease the pain of loneliness... However it started we know how it ended. He spent all his money and didn't have a penny left and to complicate matters there was a big famine in the land and he began to starve. At that time there was something like a Rent-A-Slave business and he hired himself out so he wouldn't die, but he almost did anyway. Still starving while on the job he wanted to eat the pig slop that he was feeding the pigs but he was not even allowed to do that.

So there he was...alone in a foreign country...with no friends or loved ones to help...skin and bones and a swollen belly when he finally came back to his senses. He was obsessed with one thought only...If I can just get back home again...If I can just see my father and mother one more time...I'll be okay. ..I'll be alright. And so he took off running as fast as his feet would take him.

He had no idea that long before he wanted to return, while there was still some glitter and gloss in his life, his father had never quit looking at the road. And so it was that he saw his son way out on the horizon. The father was old but he could move pretty fast and he scampered along as quickly as his two spindley legs would take him...then throwing himself upon his son he pulled him so close that the boy could hardly breathe.

And then he wept. Not the polite male tears of a grateful father but the long, uncontrollable, outbursts and sobs of a father who sees a dead child raised back to life...a child he never dreamed he would truly see again. Then pulling back just enough he kissed his son messily and one old preacer noted that  "the kiss of forgiveness was given long before the words of repentance were spoken" because that's how love is...It doesn't keep a record of the wrongs done says the Apostle Paul.

Of course the father threw a huge party to celebrate his sons return, a feast actually, down home cooking and music and dancing that probably went on for days. But you get the feeling when reading the story that none of that mattered because all the son really wanted was to be back home again... Not the home that was a location somewhere in Israel, the home where he grew up, but the home that most of us mean when someone says, "Home is where my mother is...home is where my father is"...home is where we all belong.