Return Of The Prodigal Quotes & Sayings

In waking to the strangeness of the world, many of us become strangers in our own homes. But home is where we start and where we shall someday return. The path between has been marked out for us by a Savior who became the prodigal from heaven, journeying into the far country to bring us home with Him. He is both the end of our exploring and its liberating transformation. It is Jesus who has already profaned the mysteries of God by making the unknown at the center known to us: he who has seen Jesus has seen the Father. — G.K. Chesterton

The soft yellow-brown of the son's underclothes looks beautiful when seen in rich harmony with the red of the father's cloak, but the truth of the matter is that the son is dressed in rags that betray the great misery that lies behind him. In the context of a compassionate embrace, our brokenness may appear beautiful, but our brokenness has no other beauty but the beauty that comes from the compassion that surrounds it. — Henri J.M. Nouwen

I thought of the parable of the prodigal son. We had made merry for the beloved child's return too - but what happens when the beloved child doesn't say she's sorry? The parable doesn't talk about that. Jesus figures of course you're sorry. Jesus, I thought, you blew it. Not everybody is sorry. — Caroline B. Cooney

We can talk about our dreams all night, Lisette. We can talk forever, for the rest of our lives, living one adventure after another, I promise. But not now, my darling Lisette. For now, all I can think of is the brilliance of yet another ancient Greek, Sophocles. He said, 'One word frees us of all the weight and pain of life-that word is love.' I love you, Lisette. You bring my life joy I've never known. Please, marry me. — Kasey Michaels

I like the imp / in impossibility — Pierre Joris

Ironically, it was the father's blessing that actually "financed" the prodigal son's trip away from the Father's face! and it was the son's new revelation of his poverty of heart that propelled him back into his Father's arms. Sometimes we use the very blessings that God gives us to finance our journey away from the centrality of Christ. It's very important that we return back to ground zero, to the ultimate eternal goal of abiding with the Father's in intimate communion. (pg. 243) — Tommy Tenney

[W]hen Ben was kissing me, the whole world retreated. I felt things I'd never felt before, in places I never knew were connected.
But I was pretty sure that whatever was buzzing against my thigh was not normal. For one thing, it was ringing.
Ben dragged his mouth away from mine and mumbled a curse that was a little shocking and kind of hot.
"Ignore it," he said.
That was easy for him to say when his cell phone was rounding third base. If anyone got a home run tonight, I didn't want it to be Verizon Wireless. — Rosemary Clement-Moore

It is to the prodigals ... that the memory of their Father's house comes back. If the son had lived economically he would never have thought of returning. — Simone Weil

You never depart from us, but yet, only with difficulties do we return to You. — Augustine Of Hippo

I will confess that in the interest of narrative I secretly hoped I'd find a payload of southern gothic: deceit and scandal, alcoholism, domestic abuse, car crashes, bogeymen, clandestine affairs, dearly loved and disputed family land, abandonments, blow jobs, suicides, hidden addictions, the tragically early death of a beautiful bride, racial complications, vast sums of money made and lost, the return of a prodigal son, and maybe even bloody murder. If any of this stuff lay hidden in my family history, I had the distinct sense I'd find it in those twine-bound boxes in the attic. And I did: all of it and more. — Sally Mann

The space involving insanity and genius is calculated only by good results. — Bruce Feirstein

The younger son's return takes place in the very moment that he reclaims his sonship, even though he has lost all the dignity that belongs to it. In fact, it was the loss of everything that brought him to the bottom line of his identity. He hit the bedrock of his sonship. In retrospect, it seems that the prodigal had to lose everything to come into touch with the ground of his being. — Henri J.M. Nouwen

Every reformation must have its victims. You can't expect the fatted calf to share the enthusiasm of the angels over the prodigal's return. — Saki

Man's objection to love is that it dies hard; woman's, that when it is dead, it stays dead. — H.L. Mencken

This man welcomes sinners and eats with them," Jesus confronted the Pharisees and scribes not only with the return of the prodigal son, but also with the resentful elder son. It must have come as a shock to these dutiful religious people. — Henri J.M. Nouwen

It's usually the roughest waters that teach us the most. — Robyn Carr

You know the story of the prodigal son?" Pastor Voss asked. "It's powerful, don't you think? The father running out to the wayward-turned-repentant son, giving him the best clothes, preparing a giant feast. All to celebrate his return. I always wonder, when I read that story, how different it would have been if, instead of accepting his father's gift, the son would have worn sackcloth and worked in his father's pigsty ... Loses some of its power that way, doesn't it?"
"You think that's what I'm doing?"
"God's calling you to be His son, not His slave. He doesn't want you to wear shackles, Davis. Not when He's already cut you free. — Katie Ganshert

I do not overlook the fact that the appearance of these new, free nations in the European political community not only celebrates the return of the prodigal son but also creates new sources of friction here and there. — Hjalmar Branting

Should he be advised to come home, to transplant his life and resume all the old friendships- nothing prevented this- and generally rely on the help of friends? But all this would mean to him, and the more tactfully it was put the more offensive it would be, was that his every effort had been for naught, and he should finally abandon them, that he should return home and suffer being viewed by everyone as the prodigal returned forever, that only his friends had any understanding of things, and that he was a big child who must simply listen to those friends who had remained home and been successful. — Franz Kafka

To anyone who has full awareness of our "exile" from God, our alienation from this inmost self, and our blind wandering in the "region of unlikeness," this claim can hardly seem believable. Yet it is nothing else but the message of Christ calling us to awake from sleep, to return from exile, and find our true selves within ourselves, in that inner sanctuary which is His temple and His heaven, and (at the end of the prodigal's homecoming journey) the "Father's House. — Thomas Merton

He loved them and cared for them, and you don't kill kids that you love and care for. — Thomas Griffith

I mean, I'm an artist by nature; no one considers what I do and no one knows who the heck I am, but that anybody does - it is astonishing. — Junot Diaz

In Eudora Welty's masterful story "Why I Live at the P.O." (1941), the narrator is engaged in a sibling rivalry with her younger sister, who has come home after leaving under suspicious if not actually disgraceful circumstances. The narrator, Sister, is outraged at having to cook two chickens to feed five people and a small child just because her "spoiled" sister has come home. What Sister can't see, but we can, is that those two fowl are really a fatted calf. It may not be a grand feast by traditional standards, but it is a feast, as called for upon the return of the Prodigal Son, even if the son turns out to be a daughter. Like the brothers in the parable, Sister is irritated and envious that the child who left, and ostensibly used up her "share" of familial goodwill, is instantly welcomed, her sins so quickly forgiven. Then — Thomas C. Foster

We wander in our thousands over the
face of the earth, the illustrious and the obscure, earning beyond the
seas our fame, our money, or only a crust of bread; but it seems to me
that for each of us going home must be like going to render an account.
We return to face our superiors, our kindred, our friends
those whom we
obey, and those whom we love; but even they who have neither, the most
free, lonely, irresponsible and bereft of ties,
even those for whom
home holds no dear face, no familiar voice,
even they have to meet the
spirit that dwells within the land, under its sky, in its air, in its
valleys, and on its rises, in its fields, in its waters and its trees
a
mute friend, judge, and inspirer. — Joseph Conrad

Once I look at the story of the prodigal son with the eyes of faith, the "return" of the prodigal becomes the return of the Son of God who has drawn all people into himself and brings them home to his heavenly Father. As Paul says: "God wanted all fullness to be found in him and through him to reconcile all things to him, everything in heaven and everything on earth. — Henri J.M. Nouwen

To Jesus she already is somebody. Like the loving father of the prodigal son, Jesus is frantically scanning the horizon, watching for Madonna to return to him. He's absolutely convinced that she's so valuable that she's worth dying for. 'Greater love has no one than this,' said Jesus in John 15:13, 'that one lay down his life for his friends.' That's what He did for her on the cross! — Lee Strobel

To my way of thinking, the concept drawings that Rembrandt did, the drawings he made that he used to model his artists, to work out the compositions of his paintings: those are cartoons. Look at his sketch for the return of the prodigal son. The expression on the angry younger brother's face. The head is down; the eyebrow is just one curved line over the eyes. It communicates in a very shorthand way. It's beautiful, expressive, and, in a peculiar way, it's more powerful than the kind of stilted, formalized expression in the final painting. — Jim Woodring

Let the wilds temper you, and if you weather it, in time the prodigal will return, a viper to his father's bosom. Pawn takes king. — Mark Lawrence