The story of the Prodigal Son has been on my mind this week, but it’s not prodigal himself or his brother, or even the father that’s captured by thoughts. Nope, I’ve been thinking the bout the Prodigal’s mom. Sure, I know she doesn’t actually come up in the story Jesus tells, but I’m guessing she’s there.
When Jesus tells the story in Luke 15 He says, “There was a man who had two sons. The younger one said to his father, ‘Father, give me my share of the estate.’ So he divided his property between them.” Now you and I know it wasn’t that simple. The older son probably stood in the kitchen, listening and shaking his head while the father and younger son partook in a fair amount yelling and door slamming. And Mom? Well, she’s there. At one point the young son appeals to her, looking for her approval and wanting her to side with him. The mother now has a terrible choice: my child or what’s Right. Tearfully she tells her dear offspring the truth he doesn’t want to hear and stands firm on her convictions. The younger son is so incensed he packs his bags, he takes the check for half of his inheritance, and slams the door one more time. He purposely disappears, cancelling his membership in the family. “I’ll show them,” he thinks as he blocks them from his phone and social media.
Obviously, life continued for every member of the family. We are told the Prodigal left the country to live the wild life he wanted. Dad and the remaining son absorb the loss of half the company’s capital and a third of their work force. They work hard to rebuild. And mom? I think we can assume that she, too, continues on. I’m sure that, even as she finds fulfillment and joy in her days, there is an unfilled and raw hole in her heart where her beloved child remains.
Jesus doesn’t tell us how long the Prodigal was gone. Perhaps it was just a few months, maybe just a year or two. Maybe it was much longer. We don’t know, but we do know that when he did ‘come to his senses’ and made the journey home, he didn’t have to ring the doorbell. No – in Jesus’ telling, it was the father who spotted the son when he was ‘still a long way off’. How amazing for the son, despite the burned bridges and slammed doors. His father loved and missed him so much that he was staring down the road looking for his missing son (probably a habit that began on the day the Prodigal left). Now comes the part that concerns me. Since Mom wasn’t in Jesus’ story to begin with, we have no way of knowing how the story ends for her. I hope that she is right there beside her husband, dancing joyfully at the reconciliation that brought her precious child home. That’s the ending I cling to, any other is just too sad to contemplate.
