Ellen...

"I am loved so much that I am left free to leave home. The blessing is there from the beginning. I have left it and keep on leaving it. But the Father is always looking for me with outstretched arms to receive me back and whisper again in my ear, 'You are my Beloved, on you my favor rests.' -Henri Nouwen, Return of the Prodigal Son

"But we had to celebrate and be glad, because this brother of yours was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is found again." -Luke 15:32

There was a dad who had two sons. The oldest was a hard worker: straight-laced, self-motivated, the kind of guy you didn't have to give instructions to twice. The younger was a bit different. He tended to tread his own path, often the wrong path. He was the master of his fate and wouldn't let anyone tell him otherwise.

One day he'd had enough of his dad's demands and expectations and limitations. They had a fight. The son told his father he wished his father were dead. He demanded his inheritance, the money he was due once his father had died. He was ready to blaze his own path, and he didn't need his dad holding him back anymore. So with tears in his eyes, the father relented. There was no talking him out of it. He gave him what he asked for, gave him a hug as he hopped the cab and left for the big city.

Back home, things kept on as they always had. Work had to be done around the farm and house. The older brother never complained, even as his brother's chores now got passed on to him. Besides, if he didn't do them, who would? But the empty chair at the dinner table was a nail to the dad's heart. His son, his most cherished boy, had left them behind.

Meanwhile, in the city, the boy lived life to its greatest extent. He gambled. He drank. He bought all the nicest clothes and even a new car. He put himself in front of the most beautiful girls and the most powerful businessmen. But eventually, the money began to dwindle. The extravagance ran out. Slowly but surely, the young man spent all he had and found himself looking through the bottom of a glass with nothing but a couple bucks and the clothes in his duffel.

He bummed around for a while, sleeping on friends' couches for a few nights at a time. But their generosity ran out. Soon he found himself writing those most humbling of words on a pizza box: "Hungry. Need $$. God Bless." Rock bottom could not have felt worse. Shivering one night with nothing but his jacket for warmth, tears streaming down his face, the truth hit him.

"Even the workers at the farm back home have a place to sleep and food to eat," he thought to himself. "And here I am. Freezing. Without a shower or a meal." Feeling the depths of shame, he resolved to begin the process of hitchhiking home the next day. And three days later he made it.

He hopped out of the truck at the edge of the driveway and thanked the man who'd carried him the last few miles. After a few paces towards the house, he noticed someone coming his way. Fast. "Well, it didn't take them long to send someone to kick me out," he thought. But step by step, the figure got closer. And soon it came into focus for the young man. It was his father.

And when the two met, the father's arms were wide as a condor. He wrapped the boy tighter than he'd been held since infancy. Tears poured down both their faces as the emotions overwhelmed them both. Collecting himself for a mere few seconds, the father found the calm to whisper, "Welcome home Son. I've missed you."

After an embrace that seemed to last hours but didn't move the minute hand of the clock more than a few ticks, they began to walk up to the house. The father yelled out to anyone he saw to drop what they were doing to meet at the porch. There was going to be a party. And a party there was. No more work was done that day. Everyone was in the house, and as the sun set, music could be heard for miles and the aromas of the home cooked meal must have been enjoyed in in the next town over.

Noticing the commotion, the older brother, who'd been out working til the sunset, approached the house wondering what all the noise was about. Seeing one of the workers, he whistled him over. "What's going on up there?" the son asked.

"Your brother. He's back!" the man replied with joy that his smile could not contain.

At this the older brother was outraged. After all, this is the good for nothing brother who'd left him with two times the work. And after all of that work and devotion, had his dad ever thought of throwing a party for him? No. He hadn't even taken the time to find him when the party was starting. In his misery and anger, he sat outside on the porch, close enough that the party would notice his fuming, but not so close as to enjoy the party.

Catching wind of this, the father went outside and approached his son. "Why won't you come in? Your brother is back!" The genuine enthusiasm in his dad's voice was unmistakeable.

"Because! I've been here this whole time, doing everything you've asked, doing his work, and you've never so much as thrown a dinner for me! What did you want from me? I gave you EVERYTHING!"

The father was taken aback and tears began to well up in his eyes again. Fighting them back, his voice crackled, "Oh boy, don't you know how much I love you. Everything I have. It's yours. You have all my love! But tonight, your brother came back. He was lost. He ran away. And he came back. And we must celebrate that!"

This is not a new story. You've probably heard it in fact. Jesus shared it with the Pharisees and the teachers. It usually goes by the "parable of the prodigal son."

Usually, we read it as a story about the father and his son who has run away. And for good reason. It's a parable about the INFINTE love of a god for his children! It's about a god who is forever loving us enough to let us run away and then meet us at the gate with tears in his eyes when we come stumbling home.

But lately I've read it as a story of someone else: the older brother.

Henri Nouwen wrote one of my favorite books, The Return of the Prodigal Son. If you have a chance to read it, I would absolutely recommend it. In it, he talks about reading this story and the effect it had on him. He began to see himself in the story as each of the three main characters. And I've started to do the same, only I spend a lot of time with the older brother.

There is a truly unbelievable story of love and mercy and celebration going on around him, and he's too caught up in all he's done and earned to see it! He'd rather teach his brother a lesson about what happens when you run off and lose your way. He'd rather remind his brother of all the work he left behind to be done. He'd rather keep his brother in his place.

When I was a freshman at Furman, I went on a spring break mission trip to D'Iberville, Mississippi. The church where we stayed had a children's classroom I found while exploring. On one of the shelves was a box full of journals and I started to thumb through them. The last one in the stack was a girl named Ellen's. I opened it up (breaking every rule of 7-year-old-girl diary protocol) and started to read.

On the very last page was the truest thing I've ever read to this day. The teacher had posed the question "What's the most important thing a friend can do for another?" And as if in connection with wisdom itself, Ellen's response was "Pick them up when they fall."

This answer rings truer when I think about the older brother. After all that extra work and extra responsibility, he wanted (he NEEDED) his brother to pay. To earn his way back. To regret it all. He wanted to keep his brother down. But what his brother needed was something different. At his lowest, what he needed was someone, his brother, to pick him up when he'd fallen.

One of my favorite things about Camp Barnabas, of which I've written often, is that when someone needs help, all they have to do is ask and the need is met. No matter what. People drop what they are doing to help one another. There is no need for an explanation. It doesn't matter who is asking. If someone has fallen, there is a hand to pick them back up.

This is the story of Jesus: that we are loved beyond love to travel our own roads and come back trembling before a father who is waiting with arms wide open. I've taken many paths that the father wasn't pointing towards and I come back many times in tears. I've needed someone to pick me up when I'd fallen.

And that's who Jesus calls us to be: people who are picking each other up instead of reminding them why they've fallen. We're all flawed. We all make mistakes. And our friends let us down every day. They lie to us. Speak behind our backs. Date people we don't approve of. Make choices to harm themselves. But so do I. And too often I am the older brother. I forget the boundless love of the father who has redeemed me and showered me with grace when it comes to others.

But that's not God. That's not the father. And he's inviting us to become the father in our own stories. He's inviting us to be vessels of overflowing love. He's inviting us to come inside. There's a party after all. Our love has always been there. Let's celebrate when our brother finds his way too. Let's learn to forgive trespasses and embrace grace. Anger and resentment are too heavy a burden to bear.

forever unfinished...