“Before her winter sleep, she dresses in the raiments of spring, in the color of her dreams.”

“We can’t be afraid of change. You may feel very secure in the pond that you are in, but if you never venture out of it, you will never know that there is such a thing as an ocean, a sea. Holding onto something that is good for you now, may be the very reason why you don’t have something better.”
― C. JoyBell C.

In Jesus’ parable of the Prodigal Son (Luke 15:11-32), a loving father throws a party when his lost son, long absent in silence and broken upon return, returns home.

The story, celebrating homecoming and the receptivity of God to the coming home of his wandering children, in one respect highlights the foolishness of the child who asked for his inheritance and then ran out of town and blew it on meaningless stuff. The young man’s life at one point becomes so impoverished that he finds himself living like a barnyard animal, and he thinks longingly of home. But he is ashamed, because he realized what he did in taking money from his father and utterly wasting it. And he is also ashamed because he realizes who he has become.

In the parable is a second son who lives at home, and works diligently with his dad in the family business. He has chosen that path, and it should be a choice of contentment for him: he is daily around his loving father, working, living with food on the table before him and a roof over his head.

When his ghost of a brother comes home, though, and his father is elated to see him despite his clear state of homelessness and his empty eyes, the home boy is bitter. His father throws a party for his recovered son, while the home boy reveals himself as lost.

—

There is something good to be said about the prodigal son related to his exit from and his return to home.

In both cases, he displayed courage: a courage to go, and a courage to change.

And sadly, my guess is that much of the “faithfulness” applauded in his diligent brother was actually a faithlessness and fear- fear of change, and fear of loss- that kept him close to home.

I understand this story to some extent.

As I sift back through my religious disposition in much of my life, it is easy for me to talk about my faith (when another is willing for such discourse), and to offer a summary codification of my belief system. I can talk about the goodness and kindness of God, and his provision, and his work in peoples’ lives.

But faith is wholly expressed in action, as the spirit guides the mind which moves the body, and more often than not, my spiritual score is too much like that of the diligent son’s: appearing faithful, but living from fear (because we can be loyal out of faith or out of fear).

In the case of the diligent son, his reaction to his brother’s homecoming party betrays his heart. “What about me?”, he decries, feeling slighted by the pageant his brother receives from his father that he felt he never got. He does not see that he has had his father’s resources and love and strength by him, day by day, all along. He does not see that he has been consistently cherished.

He does not see what he has had, because he cannot see what he has had.

His eyes, and his mind, are ruled by his fears.

He has never left home to find out who he is.

He has lived his life playing it safe, in his choices and his relationships, which has left him unaware of what he is or what he possesses around him.

Because you have to go to know.

To go, to risk, to try, to fail, to apologize, and to go again is to live.

To not go, to not risk, to not try, to not fail, to not apologize is to not live.

“It takes courage to grow up and become who you really are”, E.E. Cummings said.

The courage to risk, the courage to let go, the courage to fail, the courage to change.

“Self-control is the chief element in self-respect, and self-respect is the chief element in courage.”
— Thucydides

“You cannot swim for new horizons until you have courage to lose sight of the shore.”
― William Faulkner.

“Life shrinks or expands in proportion to one’s courage.”
― Anais Nin

“Freedom lies in being bold.”
― Robert Frost

“A man with outward courage dares to die; a man with inner courage dares to live.”
― Lao Tzu, Tao Te Ching

“But courage, child: we are all between the paws of the true Aslan.”
— C.S. Lewis, The Last Battle