He Would Have Eaten What the Pigs Were Eating, and No Man Gave Him Any

There was no decision. That is the thing he cannot make anybody understand.

People assume there was a night. They ask, gently, what happened, and they mean: name the event. And he has nothing to give them, because there was no event, and the absence of one has made the whole thing impossible to talk about and impossible to date.

What there was instead is a long series of ordinary steps, each of which was small enough to be reasonable at the time, and none of which he would identify as the one.

And the result is that he is somewhere he would not have chosen and could not have predicted, and he arrived by a road that had no turning on it.

There is a young man in Luke 15 who ends up in a field with pigs, and the account of how he got there has no dramatic moment in it either.

The chain, without a single moral adjective

Here it is, in the King James Version, and the thing to notice is the tone:

And not many days after the younger son gathered all together, and took his journey into a far country, and there wasted his substance with riotous living. And when he had spent all, there arose a mighty famine in that land; and he began to be in want. And he went and joined himself to a citizen of that country; and he sent him into his fields to feed swine. (Luke 15:13-15)

Read that as a sequence. Gathered. Journeyed. Wasted. Spent. Famine. Want. Joined himself. Sent into the fields.

Eight steps, and only one of them is a moral description, and even riotous living is given in three words and never elaborated.

Everything else is logistics. He ran out of money, there was a famine, he took work, the work was feeding pigs. Every one of those is a reasonable response to the step before it.

Jesus does not narrate the far country. He gives it three words and moves on, and the reason is that the far country is not the interesting part and lingering on it would make the story about something else.

You are not required to produce a dramatic account and you were never going to find a night to point at. Luke 15:13 gives the whole far country three words and spends the rest on logistics, and it is the Holy Spirit rather than a better explanation who deals with a road that had no turning on it.

The bottom, and the detail that marks it

And he would fain have filled his belly with the husks that the swine did eat: and no man gave unto him. (Luke 15:16)

He would fain have filled his belly with the husks.

He wanted the pig food. That is the bottom, and it is described in one clause without comment.

And no man gave unto him.

That is the second half and it is the sharper one. Nobody gave him any. Not because they were cruel. Because he was nobody there, and a man who has nothing to trade gets nothing, and that is how the far country works and always did.

He had gone to a place where everything was available and everything was for sale, and the moment he had nothing to pay with, the place had nothing for him.

That is the honest description of what a man in this position has been living on. It gave what it gave while he could pay, and the paying was never money.

You are not being mocked at the bottom and you were never given anything freely by the thing you went to. Luke 15:16 says no man gave unto him without comment, and it is His Spirit who makes an accurate description of what a thing costs land as clarity rather than as humiliation.

And if this has taken you somewhere heavier, if it has reached not wanting to be here at all, 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.

The turn, in three words

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! (Luke 15:17)

And when he came to himself.

That is the turn and it is three words long.

Not: and when he repented. Not: and when he decided. Came to himself, which is the phrase used for somebody waking up, or coming round after a faint, and it means he arrived back where he actually was.

Which is a description of what had been happening the whole time down that road: he had been away from himself. Not just from his father. From himself, gradually, in a way nobody in the far country would have flagged.

And what he thinks about first is not his father's love. It is bread. Have bread enough and to spare, and I perish with hunger. It is arithmetic, and it is a low motive, and the story treats it as the turn.

You have a coming to yourself available and you were never going to need a nobler reason. Luke 15:17 makes the turn a coming to himself and the first thought bread, and it is the Holy Spirit who makes an ordinary comparison the beginning of a road back.

What was going on at the other end

And the verse that shows the arrangement was never symmetrical.

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, his father saw him.

Somebody had been watching the road the whole time the son was going down the chain.

And two other verses put the same thing in different language:

He brought me up also out of an horrible pit, out of the miry clay, and set my feet upon a rock, and established my goings. (Psalm 40:2)

Brought me up. The verb is His.

And Isaiah, asking the question that fits a far country exactly:

Wherefore do ye spend money for that which is not bread? and your labour for that which satisfieth not? hearken diligently unto me, and eat ye that which is good, and let your soul delight itself in fatness. (Isaiah 55:2)

For that which is not bread. Which is the accurate name for husks.

You have somebody watching the road and you were never walking a chain nobody was following. Luke 15:20 has the father see him a great way off, and Psalm 40:2 has God do the bringing up out of the clay, and it is His Spirit who makes both of those something a man believes about his own road.