What Can We Learn From the Prodigal Son? — MacDonald on the Father’s Run
⏱ 15 min read
What Can We Learn From the Prodigal Son? — MacDonald on the Father’s Run
You know the parable. The younger son, the share of the inheritance demanded early, the far country, the riotous living, the famine, the pigs, the moment in the field when he came to himself, the long walk home with the rehearsed apology in his mouth. You know what is supposed to happen at the end. The father sees him a long way off, runs to meet him, falls on his neck, kisses him, calls for the robe and the ring and the fatted calf. The Sunday-school version of this story is the most retold of all the parables, and it has, like most retold things, gone slightly thin.
This is the slow version. George MacDonald — the Scottish minister and novelist whose Unspoken Sermons C. S. Lewis said had done more for him than any other writer — would not let you skim past the run. The Father’s run is the doctrine of the whole parable, MacDonald would say, hidden in two words at the centre of the verse. He ran. The father did not wait at the door. The father did not stand on the porch with crossed arms. The father, who in the cultural code of the ancient Near East was the one figure who did not run because his dignity forbade it, set down his dignity in the field and ran. MacDonald spent a lifetime preaching that those two words contain more theology than most modern sermons recover from the whole story. What can we learn from the prodigal son, slowly read with MacDonald at your elbow, is much more about the father than about the son.
The Everspring Daily Devotional for Women carries this kind of slow reading into a daily companion, if you want a place to keep the practice after the article. For now — read slowly.
If the shame underneath has been the part keeping you from sitting at the page in the first place, how to forgive yourself as a Christian is the slow MacDonald companion on the same ground. If the sonship question has been the deeper one — what does it mean to be a child of God on a long return home — what does it mean to be a child of God walks the long answer. And if the journal itself has been the part you have been trying to start for years, how to start a prayer journal in 10 minutes a day walks the format that survives real life.
The long walk home
Before the run, there is the walk. The son’s walk. The verse gives us a single phrase for the long psychological and physical journey of the return — and he arose, and came to his father — and the verse, in its restraint, holds more grief than most modern retellings allow it. The walk is days. The walk is the rehearsing of the apology, sentence by sentence, mile by mile. The walk is the dread of the village he will pass through, the relatives whose faces he will have to meet, the household servants whose silence will be louder than any words they could say. The walk is the slow, weary, shamed return of a man who has nothing left except the dim hope that his father might take him on as one of the hired hands.
MacDonald would have you stay with the walk for a long time before you arrive at the run. The walk is most readers’ actual situation. You have not yet arrived at the run. You are still in the days of the walk. The shame is still in the body. The apology is still being rehearsed. The far country has been left behind, but the village has not yet come into view. The walk is the slow, undramatic part of the return that most modern preaching skips because it is undramatic. MacDonald — whose own life had been long and grief-streaked, whose son had died young, whose books had been received coolly, whose health had failed him — knew the walk. He would not skip it.
Notice what the parable does not say about the walk. It does not say the son had a clear theology of the father by the time he arrived. It does not say his apology was theologically sufficient. It does not say his heart had been fully cleansed of his shame. The text gives us, simply, that he arose and came. The slowness of the rising. The dragging of the coming. The unfinished inwardness of the return. The walk does not have to be a successful walk for the run to begin.
The first passage: the Father’s resting-place
“And teach me, Lord, to understand better how this blessing comes. It is where Thou enterest to rest, to refresh and reveal Thyself, that Thou makest holy. O my God! may my heart be Thy resting-place. I would, in the stillness and confidence of a restful faith, rest in Thee, believing that Thou doest all in me. Let such fellowship with Thee, and Thy love, and Thy will be to me the secret of a life of holiness.”
— George MacDonald, Unspoken Sermons Vol. II
Read it once. Then read it again, slowly.
Notice the image. Where Thou enterest to rest. MacDonald is reversing the direction modern devotion usually runs. Modern devotion says: Lord, I come to rest in You. MacDonald says: Lord, You come to rest in me. The Father enters the son’s life as the host enters the guest’s room — not to be served, but to bring with Him the very atmosphere the room had been hoping to have. The prodigal son is the parable that demonstrates this exact reversal. The son walks the long road home expecting to come to his father. The father, the parable reveals, was already running toward him. The direction of the resting was always from the father toward the son. The son had only to keep walking, and the father, at the first sight of him, was already in motion.
For the woman on a long return, this is the part the modern shame culture has obscured. You have been assuming the journey is yours alone. You have been assuming the burden of the return is on your back. You have been rehearsing the apology, mile by mile, as if the reception will depend on the eloquence of the speech you arrive with. MacDonald, with the Father’s run quietly behind every line, would correct the assumption gently. The reception does not depend on the apology. The reception was already moving toward you while you were still in the far country. The Father’s run was the first response. Yours, the walk, is the second.
I would, in the stillness and confidence of a restful faith, rest in Thee, believing that Thou doest all in me. This is the sentence MacDonald is asking the returning soul to learn. The restful faith. The believing that Thou doest all in me. The releasing of the assumption that the holiness is your project. The Father, in MacDonald’s reading, is the maker of holiness in the soul that finally lets Him enter to rest. The son’s holiness, when it begins to be re-formed in the household after the return, is not the son’s project. It is the Father’s. The son’s part is the long walk. The Father’s part is everything else.
The somatic that goes with the long return
Pause here. The body of the returning soul is a particular kind of body. The shoulders are slightly forward — the small unconscious cowering of the body of a person who is expecting, at some inward level, to be sent away. The head is slightly down. The breath is shallow because the chest is held in the half-flinch of a body that is rehearsing the reception it expects.
Sit somewhere quiet. Press both feet flat against the floor. Let your spine, by a small fraction, lengthen — not by pulling the shoulders back deliberately, but by allowing the small unconscious cowering to release by a fraction. The body of the son on the long walk is a folded body. The body of the son meeting the father’s run is an unfolded one. The text says the father fell on his neck — which means the son’s head had to come up to receive the embrace. The somatic moment of the reception is the small inward consent of the body to let the head come up.
Take one slow inhale. On the exhale, let the small cowering soften by a fraction. Let the chin, by a fraction, lift. The walk is still being walked. But the body is being prepared, by a small inward un-folding, for the run that is coming.
Then continue reading. The body learning to un-fold, even by a fraction, is a small piece of the reception already happening. MacDonald, who understood the body and the soul were one in such matters, would say the un-folding is the Father entering the room to rest — slowly, by degrees, in the very body that had been bracing for rejection.
The middle: the devotional the slow return has its home in
The slow reading you are doing right now is the shape of the Everspring Daily Devotional for Women. One short passage a day. One slow turning of one phrase — Thou doest all in me, the rest of a faith that trusts Thee for all, the Highway of Holiness — over in the heart, on the long walk. Room on the page for the honest sentence about where the cowering still sits and where the un-folding has begun. No pep. No checklist. The format of this article, walked one short page per evening, for the woman whose long return has been quiet and shamed and is ready, slowly, to let the Father’s run be the actual posture of the reception waiting for her.
The second passage: the path of the Blessed Son
“But how shall I bless Thee for the lesson of this day, that there is not a loss or sorrow, not a pain or care, not a temptation or trial, but Thy love also means it, and makes it, to be a help in working out the holiness of Thy people. Through each Thou drawest to Thyself, that they may taste how, in accepting Thy Will of Love, there is blessing and deliverance. Thou knowest how often I have looked upon the circumstances and the difficulties of this life as hindrances. Oh, let them all, in the light of Thy holy purpose to make us partakers of Thy Holiness, in the light of Thy Will and Thy Love, from this hour be helps. Let, above all, the path of Thy Blessed Son, proving how suffering is the discipline of a Father’s love, and surrender the secret of holiness, and sacrifice the entrance to the Holiest of all, be so revealed that in the power of His Spirit and His grace that path may become mine.”
— George MacDonald, Unspoken Sermons Vol. II
Read it twice. The whole paragraph rewards the slow second reading.
MacDonald is naming the part of the prodigal-son parable most retellings skip — the far country and what it actually was for. The son, in the parable, did not learn the father’s love in the village. He learned it in the far country, in the famine, in the moment among the pigs when he came to himself. The far country was not a detour. The far country was the place the son’s heart had to go to discover what the father’s house had been all along. MacDonald, with his characteristic patience with grief, names this as a general law of the inward life. There is not a loss or sorrow, not a pain or care, not a temptation or trial, but Thy love also means it, and makes it, to be a help in working out the holiness of Thy people.
This is the harder reading of the parable, and the more pastoral. The far country was not a wasted season. The far country was where the soul learned what the house was. The famine was not a failure. The famine was the slow revelation that the inheritance the son had asked for could not, by itself, feed him. The pigs were not the lowest point in the spiritual sense; they were the slowing-down of the noise of the far country to the point where the son could finally hear, in the quiet, what the father’s house had always been.
For you, the application is direct. The seasons of your life that have looked, in retrospect, like the wasted ones — the years that did not produce what you thought they would, the relationships that did not last, the work that did not flourish, the long quiet stretches in which God seemed absent — were, in MacDonald’s reading, the far country. They were not a detour. They were the slow revelation. Through each Thou drawest to Thyself. The far country was the road home. The road home was the place the inward work happened.
The path of Thy Blessed Son, proving how suffering is the discipline of a Father’s love, and surrender the secret of holiness. The Son MacDonald is naming here is Christ — the Son whose path through suffering reveals what the prodigal-son parable was hinting at. Suffering is the discipline of a Father’s love. Surrender is the secret of holiness. The far country is the schoolroom of both. MacDonald is not romanticising suffering. He is naming, with a long Scottish patience, that the seasons that hurt were not random. They were the place the inward un-folding was being prepared for.
(If the longer process of letting yourself off the hook for the far country has been the part still costing you, how to forgive yourself as a Christian walks that ground. And if the sonship part is the part that has been thinnest for you — the question of whether you are actually a child of God on the long return — what does it mean to be a child of God is the close MacDonald companion.)
The third passage: in the rest of a faith that trusts Thee for all
“In the rest of a faith that trusts Thee for all, in the power of a surrender that would have no will but Thine, in a love that would lose itself to be wholly Thine, Blessed Jesus, we do abide in Thee.”
— George MacDonald, Unspoken Sermons Vol. II
Read it once at speed. Then read it again, slowly. The three clauses are the three movements of the reception.
The rest of a faith that trusts Thee for all. This is the first movement. The son arrives at the household and stops trying to be the project-manager of his own restoration. He has rehearsed the apology; the apology, in the text, is interrupted by the father’s embrace. The father does not let the son finish the speech. Make me as one of thy hired servants — the line the son had been preparing — is cut off by the calling for the robe and the ring. The son’s project is taken out of his hands. The faith that trusts Thee for all is the faith that lets the project go. The Father, who has been the one running the whole time, is the one running the restoration too.
In the power of a surrender that would have no will but Thine. This is the second movement. Not the will-less passivity the modern mind hears in the word surrender. MacDonald means something more particular. The surrender is the small inward consent to let the Father’s will become the household’s atmosphere. The son does not need to negotiate which room he will be in. The robe and the ring are placed on him. The fatted calf is killed without his approval being sought. The atmosphere of the household has been the father’s atmosphere all along. The son’s surrender is simply the small consent to live inside that atmosphere now.
In a love that would lose itself to be wholly Thine. This is the third. The son’s identity, after the reception, is no longer the identity of the far country. The previous self — the self that bought the share of the inheritance early and ran with it — has been lost in the father’s embrace. The new self is the son in the robe and the ring. The losing is not a tragedy; it is the precondition for the wholly Thine. MacDonald names it carefully. The love loses itself. The losing is the door.
Blessed Jesus, we do abide in Thee. The whole sentence ends in the abiding. The prodigal-son parable, read slowly with MacDonald, is a parable about abiding. The far country was the un-abiding. The walk was the slow return to the place abiding can begin. The run was the Father’s confirmation that the abiding had never been broken on His side. The household is the place the abiding can finally settle.
What we can actually learn from the prodigal son
If you came here looking for a single sentence — what can we learn from the prodigal son — the slow MacDonald answer is this. We learn that the Father runs. That He sees the son a long way off, while the son is still rehearsing the apology, and He runs. That the far country was not a wasted season but the slow revelation. That the suffering was the discipline of a Father’s love. That the surrender is the precondition for the abiding. That the project of the restoration is taken out of the son’s hands at the embrace, and the household — the robe, the ring, the calf — was always the Father’s atmosphere, waiting to receive a son who would let the apology be cut short.
The story does not end with the son back in the household. The story ends with the elder brother in the field, still arguing. MacDonald would not let you skip that ending either, but the slow lesson of the parable for the returning soul is the run. The run is the doctrine. The walk is yours. The run is His.
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A daily home for the practice
The slow practice we just walked has its 140-day form in Daily Devotional for Women. Each day, a short passage and room for the honest sentence — the small daily un-folding that holds the returning soul in proximity to the Father’s run, until the run is the actual posture of the reception you are walking toward.
The Everspring Daily Devotional for Women carries MacDonald’s slow vocabulary — Thou doest all in me, the rest of a faith that trusts Thee for all, the path of the Blessed Son — into a daily companion built for the woman on the long return home, whose walk has been quiet and shamed and whose Father is already, the parable reveals, running.
