SOMETIMES, IT IS NOT AS BAD AS YOU THINK

I ran away from home the first time at fifteen years old. I was tired of the strictness of the home. I was tired of being forced to go to church. I had a case of wanderlust resting on my mind. I wanted to broaden my horizons. I left for Haight-Ashbury in California to hang out with the hippies. About the tenth day on the road, I found myself standing with my thumb out, enduring the cold desert winds, shivering from the backdraft of 18-wheelers. Hungry, cold, alone, I soon began to have second thoughts. Then, when I was picked up on vagrancy and placed in the county jail in Bowie, Arizona, the excitement of new things began to dull. It was then I began to realize that things back at home were not as bad as I had thought.

The prodigal son had his reasons to want to leave home. He had asked for his share of his father's wealth early. He wanted to get out of that place where he had lived his whole life. He was tired of the same old, same old. He wanted to spread his wings and check out more of what the world had to offer. He left his father’s house and spent everything in a far country. When the money was gone and a famine came, the young man hired himself out to feed hogs. Day after day he stood among the animals, so hungry that the husks the pigs ate looked good to him. No one gave him anything. For a Jewish son, the pig pen was more than poverty. It was uncleanness, public failure, and the end of every story he had told himself about freedom.

From the outside, it looked like pure loss. The inheritance was gone. Reputation was gone. Dignity was gone. He had reached the bottom of the far country, and the bottom had pigs in it. Nothing about the scene suggested redemption. Yet Scripture says that right there “he came to himself” (Luke 15:17). The hunger, the stink, the emptiness, and the memory of his father’s hired servants all crashed over him on a wave of despair. The pen did not create the repentance, but it stripped away every remaining illusion that the far country was still a better place than where he was raised. What felt like the worst place became the place he finally saw clearly enough to turn around and go back to.

He was certain his life was ruined. Day after day he stood in the mud with the pigs, so hungry the slop looked desirable. Every hour confirmed what he already believed, and that was that this way of living was terrible and nothing good remained. The far country had taken everything. Then, in the place he hated most, he came to himself (Luke 15:17, KJV). The pen that had convinced him he was finished became the spot where he remembered his father’s house and turned toward home. What he had judged as the end of his story turned out to be the beginning of his return.

Jonah once felt the same certainty. Inside the belly of the great fish, he was sure his life was over. He believed that Nineveh was the worst place on earth, and no way was he going there to preach. Anywhere but Nineveh! But when he refused to obey God, he went down to Tarshish. He went down to pay the fare. He went down into the hold of the ship. He went down into the depths of the ocean. Finally, he went down through the mouth and gullet of the big fish. Down, down, down once he turned his back on the will of God. The darkness, the confinement, and the consequences of his flight all declared that he was finished. Yet that terrible place became the setting of his prayer altar. Three days he spent in the "belly of hell." It was then that it crossed his mind that Nineveh wasn't so bad after all. When the fish cast him onto dry land, the very ordeal he had believed would destroy him had become the path that carried him to Nineveh. The life he thought was lost was the life God still intended to use.

What about Naomi, who had left Bethlehem in Judah to travel to a "better" place? Israel was just no longer the place to be, since there was a famine. She and her family moved away to Moab. But, not many years later, she loses her husband and then her sons. It was then that she realized that Bethlehem was not so bad after all. Naomi returned to Bethlehem convinced her life was bitter beyond recovery. She told the women of the town, “Call me not Naomi, call me Mara, for the Almighty hath dealt very bitterly with me. I went out full, and the LORD hath brought me home again empty” (Ruth 1:20–21). Years later she held the child born to Ruth and Boaz, the child who would stand in the line of David. The emptiness she had been certain was permanent had become the setting of unexpected restoration. The life she believed was terrible had not been the final measure of her story.

In each case the person did not pretend the hard place was pleasant while they were in it. The pig pen was unclean. The fish’s belly was a place of dread. Naomi’s return felt like total loss. They believed their way of life was terrible. Only afterward did they discover that the place they had judged as ruin had not been as final or as empty of purpose as they once thought. The prodigal’s pig pen remains the plainest picture. The life he was sure was finished because he did not appreciate his former life became the reason he started home, and the father was already watching the road.