He Had a Speech Ready and His Father Never Let Him Finish It

He has been writing it for four years and it is not finished.

The speech. The one he would have to make. It has an opening, which is the hardest part and has been rewritten many times, and it has a middle where he accounts for the specifics, and it has a proposal at the end about what he is prepared to accept going forward.

He works on it in the truck. He has said parts of it out loud. He is not a stupid man and he knows what he is doing looks like avoidance, and he would tell you it is not, that it is preparation, and that a thing like this should not be walked into unprepared.

What is actually true is that the speech can never be good enough, because its job is to make the return deserved, and no arrangement of words does that.

So he keeps working on it. And the working on it has become the relationship, and there is a story about a son who did exactly this and got most of the way through the speech before he was interrupted.

The speech, as he wrote it

Here it is, in the King James Version, drafted in a field:

And when he came to himself, he said, How many hired servants of my father's have bread enough and to spare, and I perish with hunger! I will arise and go to my father, and will say unto him, Father, I have sinned against heaven, and before thee, And am no more worthy to be called thy son: make me as one of thy hired servants. (Luke 15:17-19)

Three parts. The confession, the disqualification, and the proposal.

Father, I have sinned against heaven, and before thee. That is the confession and it is accurate.

And am no more worthy to be called thy son. That is the disqualification, and it is also accurate as far as it goes.

Make me as one of thy hired servants. That is the proposal, and it is the part he worked hardest on, because it is the part that makes the return survivable. If he can come back as staff, then he is not asking for anything he has no right to. He has a role. He can be useful. Nobody has to decide anything about him.

That is the shape of every speech like this. The proposal at the end is always about becoming something less, because less feels like it can be justified.

You are not the first man to draft that and you were never wrong about the arithmetic in it. Luke 15:19 has the whole proposal written down in the text with nothing softened, and it is the Holy Spirit rather than a better draft who does something with a man in the middle of writing one.

What happens before he gets there

But something happens before the speech does, and the order is the entire point.

And he arose, and came to his father. But when he was yet a great way off, his father saw him, and had compassion, and ran, and fell on his neck, and kissed him. (Luke 15:20)

When he was yet a great way off.

Which means the father was looking. Nobody sees a figure at that distance without having watched the road for a long time. That is a detail about what the father was doing during the four years the speech was being written.

And ran. The distance gets closed by the father, at speed, before the son arrives.

And fell on his neck, and kissed him. All of this happens before a single word of the speech is delivered.

So the reception is settled before the confession. Not because the confession does not matter, because it comes next and it is real. But the order in the text is unambiguous and it is not the order anybody assumes.

You are watched for on a road and you were met before you arrived. Luke 15:20 says when he was yet a great way off, his father saw him, and it is His Spirit who makes a distance closed from the other end something a man believes about his own driveway.

The line that does not get said

Then the son starts, and Luke is careful about what he manages to get out.

And the son said unto him, Father, I have sinned against heaven, and in thy sight, and am no more worthy to be called thy son. But the father said to his servants, Bring forth the best robe, and put it on him; and put a ring on his hand, and shoes on his feet. (Luke 15:21-22)

Compare it to the draft. He gets the confession. He gets the disqualification.

He never says make me as one of thy hired servants.

The proposal, the part he had worked hardest on, the part that was going to make the whole thing manageable, is the exact line the father cuts off. And what he cuts it off with is a robe, a ring and shoes, which are the three things a son wears and a hired man does not.

The father does not argue with the confession. He does not say the son was wrong about what he had done. He interrupts only the part where the son assigns himself a lower status.

You are not permitted to demote yourself and you were never going to be received as staff. Luke 15:22 has the father cut in with a robe and a ring before the proposal can be made, and it is the Holy Spirit who makes that interruption something a man experiences rather than admires in a story.

And if the rehearsing has gone past dread into somewhere darker, if it has reached not wanting to be here, that is not a thing to hold alone. A doctor, a counselor, somebody you trust who will pick up the phone. In the United States the 988 crisis line answers day and night. Nobody is asked to carry that by himself.

What the timing says about the whole arrangement

Paul puts the same order into one sentence and it is the plainest statement of it anywhere.

But God commendeth his love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. (Romans 5:8)

While we were yet sinners. Not after. Not on condition. While.

The action was taken at the point of maximum unfitness, which means the fitness was never the trigger and cannot now be the entrance requirement.

And David, who had more to confess than most, describes what actually happened when he finally said it:

I acknowledged my sin unto thee, and mine iniquity have I not hid. I said, I will confess my transgressions unto the LORD; and thou forgavest the iniquity of my sin. (Psalm 32:5)

Read the timing in that verse. I said, I will confess. And then, in the same sentence, thou forgavest.

The forgiveness lands on the intention. He does not even get to the confession in the sentence before it is answered.

You have forgiveness that arrives on the intention and you were never going to get through the speech first. Psalm 32:5 puts the forgiving in the same sentence as the deciding, and Romans 5:8 says it happened while we were yet sinners, and it is His Spirit who makes that timing something a man can act on tonight.