Prodigal Nostalgia

Loving this excerpt from a colleague's reflections on the story of the Prodigal Son:

The awareness of the brevity of my life invokes a longing for something more. Everything has a hint of pig-pod in it. My marriage isn’t quite right; I impart to my children things that aren’t quite right; I hide significant portions of myself from others. The good that I do is tainted by self-serving motives; I’m frustrated by my lack of spiritual growth; I am dissatisfied with my lack of depth.  There exists a heightened hunger and thirst for something that causes me to look back and, at the same time, pulls me forward.

All of us are prodigal sons and daughters. Our life-long nostalgia—our longing to be reunited with something in the universe from which we feel cut off, to be on the inside of some door which we have only seen from the outside—is no mere neurotic fancy; it is the truest index of our situation. This is what the Bible tells us is true about our situation in life. The beauty of nature that is just out of reach, the experience just behind the door, instills a yearning for something that this world cannot supply. Like the prodigal son, I have to come to my senses to return to the Father. He waits for me. 

(Read the full devotional meditation here.)