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Come Home, My Son!

By Gregory John Wilson

September 23, 2026

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There is a picture I cannot get out of my mind. An old man stands at the edge of his property, one hand shading his eyes, looking down a long and empty road. He has stood there before. He has stood there more times than anyone in the house can count. The servants have stopped asking what he is looking for. They know.

He is looking for his son.

Yeshua told us about this man, and He was not telling us a story about someone else. He was pulling back the curtain on the heart of His own Father—and ours:

“But when he was still a great way off, his father saw him and had compassion, and ran and fell on his neck and kissed him.” Luke 15:20 (NKJV)

A great way off. The father saw him before anyone else could have, because the father had never stopped looking. Whether you are a son or a daughter reading this, please hear me: that is how the Father in heaven is looking at you right now.

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The Poverty He Sees

Think of what the father saw coming up that road. Not the proud young man who left with a full purse and a head full of plans. He saw rags. He saw bare feet. He saw the hollow cheeks of someone who had been so hungry he longed to eat what the pigs were eating. He saw a boy who smelled of the far country.

“But when he came to himself, he said, ‘How many of my father's hired servants have bread enough and to spare, and I perish with hunger!’” Luke 15:17 (NKJV)

The Father sees our poverty, and He sees all of it. He sees the empty cupboard and the unpaid bill. He sees the parent who skipped dinner so the children could eat. He sees the man sleeping in his car and the woman who has pawned the last thing she owned. None of it is hidden from Him, and none of it is beneath Him.

“This poor man cried out, and the LORD heard him, and saved him out of all his troubles.” Psalm 34:6 (NKJV)

But He also sees a deeper poverty—the kind that can hide behind a nice house and a full bank account. The poverty of a soul that has wandered from its Maker. The loneliness at three in the morning. The shame we carry like a sack of stones. The ache that no amount of pleasure or success has ever filled. We can fool the world, and we can often fool ourselves, but we cannot fool Him:

“Because you say, ‘I am rich, have become wealthy, and have need of nothing’—and do not know that you are wretched, miserable, poor, blind, and naked…” Revelation 3:17 (NKJV)

And here is what undoes me: when He sees us like this, He is not disgusted. He is moved.

“But when He saw the multitudes, He was moved with compassion for them, because they were weary and scattered, like sheep having no shepherd.” Matthew 9:36 (NKJV)

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In Spite of Our Sin

We need to be honest. The son in the story was not a victim of bad luck. He demanded his inheritance while his father was still alive, which was as good as saying, “I wish you were dead.” He walked away on purpose. He wasted everything on purpose. His poverty was, in large part, his own doing.

So is ours. Much of the brokenness in our lives we have chosen with our own hands. And yet the Father's heart does not harden toward us. Listen to the way God speaks over His rebellious people through the prophet Hosea. You can almost hear His voice break:

“How can I give you up, Ephraim? How can I hand you over, Israel? … My heart churns within Me; My sympathy is stirred.” Hosea 11:8 (NKJV)

And listen to Yeshua, looking out over the city that would soon reject Him, weeping over it:

“O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the one who kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to her! How often I wanted to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, but you were not willing!” Matthew 23:37 (NKJV)

How often I wanted to gather you. That is the cry of a Father who wants to shelter His children—to pull them in close, under His wings, out of the cold and the storm—even while they are still fighting Him. He does not wait for us to clean ourselves up before He longs for us. He longs for us in the pigpen.

“As a father pities his children, so the LORD pities those who fear Him. For He knows our frame; He remembers that we are dust.” Psalm 103:13–14 (NKJV)

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He Laid It All Out on the Cross

But love like that faced a real problem. Sin is not a small thing to a holy God. It had built a wall between the Father and His children, and it could not simply be ignored. Justice had to be done. The debt had to be paid. A holy Father could not pretend His children had not run away.

So He did the unthinkable. Rather than lose us, He gave up His own Son. The Father did not wait for us to find a way back to Him; He came all the way down the road Himself. On the cross, heaven laid everything out on the table—every drop of blood, every breath, every last thing it had—to pay what we owed.

“But God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.” Romans 5:8 (NKJV)

“But He was wounded for our transgressions, He was bruised for our iniquities; the chastisement for our peace was upon Him, and by His stripes we are healed.” Isaiah 53:5 (NKJV)

Do you see it? The chastisement for our peace. Yeshua took the blow so that there could be peace between us and the Father. He who was rich became poor—stripped, beaten, thirsty, and naked on a Roman cross—so that we who are poor could be made rich:

“For you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though He was rich, yet for your sakes He became poor, that you through His poverty might become rich.” 2 Corinthians 8:9 (NKJV)

The cross is where the storehouses of heaven's grace were broken open. And it was the Father's own idea. It was His pleasure to make peace this way:

“For it pleased the Father that in Him all the fullness should dwell, and by Him to reconcile all things to Himself… having made peace through the blood of His cross.” Colossians 1:19–20 (NKJV)

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The Robe, the Ring, and the Feast

The son had a speech ready. He had practiced it all the way home: “I am no longer worthy to be called your son. Make me like one of your hired servants.” He never got to finish it. The father was already calling out over his shoulder:

“Bring out the best robe and put it on him, and put a ring on his hand and sandals on his feet. And bring the fatted calf here and kill it, and let us eat and be merry; for this my son was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is found.” Luke 15:22–24 (NKJV)

A robe for the rags. A ring for the shame. Sandals for the bare, bleeding feet. A feast for the hunger. The Father does not take us back as hired hands on probation. He takes us back as sons and daughters, clothed in the righteousness of His Son.

And notice who is happiest in the story. Not the son—though he must have wept for joy. It is the father. The one who threw the party. The one who finally had peace in his heart, because the child he had grieved over was home at last.

“Therefore, having been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ.” Romans 5:1 (NKJV)

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Come Home

Maybe you are still in the far country. Maybe you have been there so long you have forgotten the way back, or you are sure the door has been locked behind you. Maybe you are ashamed of what you spent and who you became. Maybe you are simply tired—tired of hunger, tired of pretending, tired of being alone.

The door is not locked. The Father is still standing at the edge of the road. The price has already been paid in full, and He is not asking you to pay it again. He is not asking you to fix yourself first. He is only asking you to come.

“Ho! Everyone who thirsts, come to the waters; and you who have no money, come, buy and eat. Yes, come, buy wine and milk without money and without price.” Isaiah 55:1 (NKJV)

If you listen closely, beneath all the noise of this world, I believe you can hear Him calling your name. His voice is not angry. It is breaking with love:

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A Prayer for the Journey Home

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