Welcome Home Prodigals

Tucked away in beautiful southern Lancaster County is the picturesque Rawlinsville Camp Meeting. For the last 123 years, people have gathered there in mid summer to hear the Word of God, worship the Lord, and for some to connect or reconnect to God through his Son, Jesus Christ. It has been a place where many spiritual prodigals have come home to the Lord.

In the late 1800’s, William James Kirkpatrick wrote a song entitled, “Lord I’m Coming Home,” at that camp meeting in Rawlinsville. Kirkpatrick, a church musician from the Philadelphia area, used his talent to compose over 80 songs. While at Rawlinsville, he developed a concern for the spiritual condition of the soloist at the camp meeting who was a nonbeliever. After Kirkpatrick prayed for the young man, the words to the song came to him. The song was loosely based upon the story Jesus told of the Prodigal Son in Luke 15:11-32. Kirkpatrick wrote the words down quickly, and after the soloist sang them that night, the young man saw his need as a spiritual prodigal to come home to his Heavenly Father.

Within in the heart of a prodigal, there often exists a secret desire to go home to where they really belong. In one sense, all of humanity is a prodigal. The prophet Isaiah wrote, “We’re all like sheep who’ve wandered off and gotten lost. We’ve all done our own thing, gone our own way” (53:6, The Message). While wandering around and doing our own thing, the Spirit of God pulls at our hearts, reminding us that this is not where we belong. Too often that “pull” goes unidentified and people simply seek panaceas to placate their lost and longing hearts.

Perhaps Ernest Hemingway best captured the longings of a prodigal in his short story, “Capital of the World.” The story begins with the narrator telling about a humorous event. According to the narrator, Madrid is full of boys named Paco, a nickname for Francisco. One father was estranged from his son, Paco. Hemingway tells of a father who seeks to restore their relationship and “came to Madrid and inserted an advertisement in the personal columns of El Liberal which said: Paco meet me at hotel Montana noon Tuesday. All is forgiven. Papa… The police had to disperse the eight hundred young men who answered the advertisement.” These 800 young men were looking for the opportunity to go home to their fathers and no longer roam as prodigals. In their hearts they had a longing exposed when they saw an opportunity to be restored.

Jesus tells a similar story. His story was to show why he was on the mission to “seek and to save that which was lost” (Luke 19:10) and to clarify why he was rubbing shoulders with sinners (Luke 15:1-2). He was announcing to sinners, to prodigals, that they could come home because they were loved. As Jesus claimed, “For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life” (John 3:16). He knew the way home would be through what he would do on the cross. Jesus “did not come to be served, but to serve, and give His life a ransom for many” (Mark 10:45). Thus he told his disciples, “No one comes to the Father except through me” (John 14:6). The only way for prodigals to go home to their Heavenly Father was through the way he would provide for them.

The story Jesus told indicated how prodigals would be welcomed as those that returned to God by means of His Son. They would get an open-armed, joyful reception (Luke 15:20-24), a reception anyone would appreciate. Although you may not be named Paco and have a father looking for you, you have a Heavenly Father who wants to restore you and say, “Welcome Home!”