Heathersleigh Homecoming Read Free

are in our midst. And too few of us are urging them toward the most important business of their lives—home-going.
    Here is an enormous truth: The door into knowing the Father’s heart, the door into intimacy with God our Creator, often opens first toward one’s earthly parents. Your opportunity is to be a true friend to the prodigals you encounter—not one who justifies and excuses them in their quiet pride and self-reliant alienation. You who understand the import of this parable, you can be the best friend it is possible for a prodigal to have. You can help turn their hearts toward home.
    There is an order to be observed. God gave us parents so that we would learn to love, honor, obey, and trust him . Such is the underlying lesson in the classroom of that earthly relationship. It is a school which cannot be bypassed. Where a wrong attitude exists toward a parent, that same attitude will inevitably lie as an unresolved irritant and inhibition to growth in one’s relationship with God. It is simple cause and effect in the spiritual realm. Secretly harbored anger, bitterness, resentment, and unforgiveness—no matter how far shovedinto the subconscious—will forever prevent the deepest intimacy with God . . . until they are held up to the light and relinquished.
    Be a friend to the prodigal.
    Hold up the mirror of accountability.
    Be the Lord’s ally and partner for the reconciliation of the world, by urging, exhorting, and encouraging toward homecoming.
    Such is among the reasons for this series—to explore some of these complex but vitally timely issues and challenges in more depth than usual. Especially is it my hope to prompt reflection and prayer in two areas, one on each side of the generational fence:
    First, to explore the grief and suffering of the father and mother during what must surely be one of the greatest trials of life. I hope this will enable us to come more personally to grips with the opportunity they have to learn to thankfully partake of that waiting, prayerful, hopeful, tearful, agonizing aspect of the divine Fatherhood.
    And second, to explore what it means to “go home,” and how to do so fully and completely, so that the heart of the prodigal is truly made whole. I find myself intrigued by this process, wherever and in whatever circumstances a prodigal finds himself—and sometimes it is a long process which must come in slow stages and by infinitesimal degrees—of awakening to the necessity of at last saying, “I will arise and go to my Father.”
    Therefore, as interesting, even compelling, as may be many of the other personalities in this saga, especially those of Charles and Jocelyn Rutherford, this will always in a foundational way be Amanda’s story.
    Real-life circumstances, however, are unpredictable. It is a wise man or woman who when confronted by some duty or necessity fulfills it quickly. Delay can be costly. Healing can occur within a single heart, and God will use such to fulfill his purposes. But in terms of earthly relationships, reconciliation is often sought too late. A lifetime of grief must then be borne which might have been prevented had the promptings toward awakening been heeded earlier.
    Homecoming ought never be put off.
    One final personal note concerning the location of the fictional Chalet of Hope. The high mountain air in that region is just as described—at least I found it so. I have never forgotten the overpowering sense of wondrous quiet when standing at Männlichen overlooking the awe-inspiring drop of more than 4,700 feet straightdown into the valley of Lauterbrunnen. Since that moment I have always wanted to set a story there.
    It was to those same high Alps that George MacDonald traveled in 1865. I like to imagine him standing at that very spot and feeling similar sensations. Very soon thereafter he used the region as a backdrop to recount the quickening of spiritual consciousness in one