Prodigal Explanations 2

And he arose, and came to his father. But when he was yet a great way off, his father saw him, and had compassion, and ran, and fell on his neck, and kissed him. (Luke 15:20)

In the last post, I explained why the shepherd and father were the focus of those parables.

However, I think it might be an anticlimax for most if I do not dispose of one of the verses the error of trashing the faithful for the prodigal hangs on.

Why did the father see his son afar off.

In the didactic error, the narrative pushed is that the father stopped everything to wait for the prodigal to come back home.

His life stopped the moment the prodigal left home for the pig pen.

Is that how love operates?

It probably does when we are looking at the romantic aspects of what we deceive ourselves is love.

But a father’s love does not operate that way.

Neither does God’s love.

For example, why did he not plead with the prodigal to not leave? Why did he not refuse to give him his inheritance so that he does not leave?

He must have realised that the son’s heart had already relocated from his authority and that remaining with him would have caused greater damage to them both than if he left.

Nobody repents before seeing the error of their ways.

As I have severally written about rebellion; rebels explain their sins instead of confronting them.

The young rebel therefore needed to face the rebellion against his father. Otherwise, it could have meant unending confrontation.

Or why do we have children (and wives) killing a man to access his wealth?

It is very possible that the young son could have resorted to that had his father used reason to force him to stay at home.

The father let him go because the son was already out there and that it was that inheritance that was keeping him at home. And that he would stop at nothing to get that inheritance.

But the father knew something else.

The earth is a very small place for rebels and egocentric individuals

He knew that his son would waste his inheritance in a very short time.

And he knew that he will feel the pinch so hard that he will reconsider his folly.

And of course, he hoped that his son would repent before the world swallowed him.

It is very possible that he was following that son’s descent.

He was monitoring him to be able to assess how close he was to repentance.

He therefore knew when he was ready to come home.

Let me give an observation before you accuse me of imagining too much.

I have been involved with street kids (actually men)

Quite a number come from wealth and influence as it is the vagabond spirit that leads them to those streets.

The truth of the matter is that the families those boys come from closely monitor their grown children, albeit very secretly, to avoid them running off somewhere else.

And that is made very clear when they fall sick, have an accident or die.

Then the family would come with their full force to assist their prodigal.

I am sure that this father was like those others.

It is very possible that he already knew that his son had repented even before he began that humbling trek home.

He also knew that the son would be extremely ashamed of facing his father just as he knew that a confrontation with his elder brother may have been catastrophic.

That is why he was looking out for him. He knew that he was on his way home

Otherwise explain to me the logic and practicality of a father standing at the gate for the months or years the prodigal had been away.

It was the father’s love that brought him to the gate once he realised that his son was bound home.

He cut off that beautiful speech because he knew that the heart had changed.

He wanted to mend the relationship because he knew that his son was a new man and that he had learnt his lessons.

We lose our children when we refuse to allow them to leave.

We lose them when we use reason to convince them to stay.

And we will lose ourselves when we force them to remain by denying them their inheritance because they will then take it by force.

The father was not fixated at the gate.

He was there because he knew that his son was on his way home.