Returning is a lifelong struggle

Yet Unconditional Love welcomes us!

Originally published: 21 September 2021 (Wordpress) | Amended and republished: 22 April 2023

We all have stories of returning…

We all have many stories of returning.

Our stories of returning may relate to the mundane and ordinary events of everyday life. We return from a day at work, or school, or shopping, or from time enjoyed in nature, or from a visit with family and friends.

As we return, we may have experiences of joy and elation and satisfaction; sometimes we return with sorrows and despondency and discontent. Our home-coming may enhance our pleasures, or it may cause heightened pain. These are the mixed realities of returning and homecoming in our human lives. We all know them well.  

A spirituality of returning and homecoming…

For people of Judeo-Christian faith, returning and homecoming have many spiritual meanings and messages.

Often, the call is from prophets of God for the wayward people to return to God. The prophet Hosea pleads: “Return, O Israel, to the Lord, for you have stumbled because of your iniquity”. (Hosea 14.1 NRSV).  Zechariah thunders forth, “Return to me, says the Lord of hosts, and I will return to you, says the Lord of hosts…Return from your evil ways and from your evil deeds.” (Zech 1.3, NRSV). God waits for the returning people, with love and a promise of wholehearted-healing, as in Jeremiah: “I will give them a heart to know that I am the Lord; and they shall be my people and I will be their God, for they shall return to me with their whole heart”. (Jer. 24:7 NRSV).  

Turning to the New Testament, no story reverberates with the pain and pleasure of return and homecoming as that of the Prodigal Son in Luke’s gospel (15: 11-32). The late Henri Nouwen (the Dutch-born priest, spiritual teacher, and author) has reflected deeply, creatively, and powerfully on this story.  A chance and moving encounter with a reproduction of Rembrandt’s painting, ‘The Return of the Prodigal Son,’ provided an intense spiritual awakening for Nouwen, and ignited a  long personal and spiritual adventure in which he comes to discover much about himself and the paradoxes of his life, and so much more about God and God’s unconditional love for him and everyone else. Nouwen’s personal meditations on the story is found in his acclaimed book: “The Return of the Prodigal Son: A Story of Homecoming” (1994).  

In the daily meditation of Henri Nouwen below, entitled “You Are Home”, we get a glimpse into his spiritual awakening, and the invitation for each of us to return to God’s unconditional love.

“I have been meditating on the story of the prodigal son. It is a story about returning. I realize the importance of returning over and over again. My life drifts away from God. I have to return. My heart moves away from my first love. I have to return. My mind wanders to strange images. I have to return. Returning is a lifelong struggle. . . . I am moved by the fact that the father didn’t require any higher motivation. His love was so total and unconditional that he simply welcomed his son home”.  

“Come, let us return to the Lord… Let us acknowledge the Lord; let us press on to acknowledge him. As surely as the sun rises, he will appear; he will come to us like winter rains, like the spring rains that water the earth.” – HOSEA 6:1a, 3 (NIV)

Source: Henri Nouwen Society | Daily Meditation |14 September, 2021

Personal stories and reflections on returning…

I have had occasion, many times, to reflect on my own personal and spiritual journey and relationship with God over several decades. I notice how my stories are filled with many experiences of leaving, wandering, returning, and homecoming - physically, emotionally, relationally, psychologically, and spiritually.

And I find so much in the ‘Story of the Prodigal Son’ and in Henry Nouwen’s reflections and meditations that resonate so powerfully and deeply.    

Here is one personal and poetic reflection – evoked and inspired by the Story of the Prodigal Son:  

What Love is this?  

The son had squandered all that he had,
Dissolute and lost in a far distant land,
In his hell he schemed to amend for his bad,
Rehearsing a return that he had so desperately planned;
 
The long journey home to the father he left,
Is mired in failure, defeat and regret,
Onward he plods, of almost all peace bereft,
Anxious foreboding for how he’d be met;
 
Peering into the horizon, father sees son,
He’d waited so longingly for this day to dawn,
Compassion whelms up and he sets out to run,
Eschewing a culture to which he had sworn;
 
In a humiliating run, father meets son,
Lavishly covering him in reconciling embrace,
The son starts to splutter those words he’d begun,
But exuberant kisses overcome his disgrace;
 
So long had the father waited with forgiving face,
For a son he had lost who had once wished him dead,
Across the divide of the unspoken disgrace,
The heart of the father beating is all that needs said;
 
The son is stunned by such unrivalled grace,
All words he prepared dissipate into air,
Warmly ensconced in his father’s embrace,
The son is at home in an unconditional care;
 
The son in the best robe of the father is clothed,
A prized family ring on his finger is shared,
Weary feet with sandals are softly enveloped,
The fatted calf for communal festivity prepared;
 
Held in this force-field of such compelling love,
The son feels a sacred healing inside his own soul,
Strangely touched as though from above,
By the father’s compassion that makes him feel whole;
 
What Love is this that still calls out to us?
Across separated distances of all time and space,
Such liberating Love to quench our feverish fuss,
And receive us completely in welcoming grace.
 
© Roger Arendse 20200331
 
This poem is inspired by the first part of Jesus’ well-known Parable of the Prodigal Son as told in Luke 15:11-24 and as understood within its 1st century Palestinian cultural setting. In this story, the wavering and conditioned behaviour of the returning son is met by the unexpected and unconditional love and acceptance of the father.  Amazing and extravagant grace overcomes the merited disgrace. See Kenneth E. Bailey 1976 Poet and Peasant & Through Peasant Eyes: A Literary-Cultural Approach to the Parables in Luke. Combined edition, pp158-190. 

Reflection Exercise:

1. What every day stories and struggles of returning and homecoming do you recall right now as you read this post?

2. What spiritual stories of returning and homecoming have been part of your faith journey?

3. How have you experienced moments of awakening during your journey so far?

4. How has your understanding of God been informed and transformed along your journey?

5. What promise and significance does “the unconditional Love of God” hold out for your life right now, and for your ongoing journey?

Feel free to share some of your thoughts, feelings, and experiences here. I’d love to hear from you.

Blessings!