by Max Lucado
He should be happy. He possesses the package he set out to get when he stood at the bottom of the ladder looking up. But now that he has what he wants, he doesn’t want it. Now that he is at the top of the ladder, he sees that it is leaning against the wrong building.
He left his bride in the dust of his ambition. The kids that called him daddy don’t call him daddy anymore; they have a new one. And though he has everything that success offers, he’d trade it in a heartbeat to have a home to go home to tonight.
“I’ve counted the holes in the ceiling tiles a hundred times.” The voice shook in spite of an attempt to sound stable. “They say I’ll be in this cast for six weeks. They also say I’m lucky to be alive.”
His voice was barely audible through the oxygen mask. The skin on his forehead and nose was scraped.
“They keep asking me what I remember. I don’t even remember getting into the car, much less driving it. I’d never tried crack before. I guess I tried too much. I’ll think before I try it again. In fact, it looks like I’m going to have plenty of time for thinking.”
No games. No noise. No flashing lights. Your dreams have come true, but instead of letting you sleep, they are keeping you awake. What do you do at a time like this? Where do you go when the parade stops? Your failures suck the sandy foundation of your future out from under you. Now what do you do?
You can blame the world. The prodigal son could have done that. In fact, he probably did.2 The boy stared at his reflection in the muddy puddle. He questioned whether the face was really his. It didn’t look like him.
The flame in the eyes had been extinguished. The smirk had been humbled. The devil-may-care attitude had been replaced with soberness.
He tumbled headlong and landed face first.
It wasn’t enough to be friendless. It wasn’t enough to be broke. It wasn’t enough to pawn his ring, his coat, even his shoes. The long hours walking the streets didn’t break him. You would think that the nights with only a bunkhouse pillow or the days lugging a bucket of pig slop would force a change of heart.
But they didn’t. Pride is made of stone. Hard knocks may chip it, but it takes reality’s sledgehammer to break it.
His was beginning to crack.
His first few days of destitution were likely steamy with resentment. He was mad at everyone. Everyone was to blame. His friends shouldn’t have bailed out on him. And his brother should come and bail him out. His boss should feed him better, and his dad never should have let him go in the first place.
He named a pig after each one of them.
Failure invites finger pointing and buck passing. A person may be out of money, out of a job, and out of friends, but he is never out of people to blame.
Sometimes it’s the family:
“If my parents had taken their job more seriously . . .”
“If my husband wasn’t so selfish . . .”
“If my kids had any respect for me . . .”
“If I had been potty trained earlier . . .”
Sometimes it’s the system:
“No one can make a good grade in this school!”
“If I had been given an equal shot, I would have been promoted.”
“This whole place is rigged.”
“There is no way a person can move up in this world.”
Even the church has a few bucks passed its way.
“Oh, I’d attend church, but did you know I went to church once back in ’58, and no one came to visit me?”
“That group of folks? A bunch of hypocrites.”
“I plan on going back to church. Just as soon as I find one that is teaching the proper doctrine, housing all the homeless, feeding all the sick, and giving green stamps for attendance awards, then I’ll go back.”
Soon you are right and everyone else is wrong. You are the victim and the world is your enemy.
A second option is to continue playing the games, only this time with a little more abandon.
My wife has a cousin named Rob. Rob is a great guy. His good heart and friendly smile endear him to everyone. He is the kind of fellow you call upon when you can’t call on anyone else.
So when the Girl Scouts needed someone to dress up like the Cookie Monster at a fund-raiser, who did they call? You got it. Rob.
There were a few problems. First, no one anticipated the day of the campaign would be so hot. Second, Rob didn’t know that the costume would be so big. Third, who would have thought that Rob’s glasses would fog up so badly he couldn’t see? As he was sitting on the stage waiting his turn to speak, the heat inside the mask covered his glasses with fog. He couldn’t wipe them off—his paws were too big to fit in the eyehole.
He started to worry. Any minute he would be called upon to give a talk, and he couldn’t even see where the podium was!
He whispered for help. The costume was too thick, and his cries went unheard.
He began to wave his hands. What he heard in response were the squeals of delight from the kids. They thought he was waving at them!
As I heard this story I chuckled . . . and then I sighed. It was too familiar. Cries for help muffled behind costumed faces? Fear hidden behind a painted smile? Signals of desperation thought to be signs of joy?
Tell me that doesn’t describe our world.
Ever since Eve hemmed the fig leaves to fit Adam, we have been disguising our truths.
And we’ve gotten better with each generation.
Michelangelo’s creativity is nothing compared to a bald man’s use of a few strands of hair. Houdini would stand in awe at our capacity to squeeze lumberjack waistlines into ballerina-sized pants.
We are masters of the masquerade. Cars are driven to make a statement. Jeans are purchased to portray an image. Accents are acquired to hide a heritage. Names are dropped. Weights are lifted. Yarns are spun. Toys are purchased. Achievements are professed.
And the pain is ignored. And, with time, the real self is forgotten.
The Indians used to say that within every heart there is a knife. This knife turns like the minute hand on a clock. Every time the heart lies, the knife rotates an increment. As it turns, it cuts into the heart. As it turns, it carves a circle. The more it turns, the wider the circle becomes. After the knife has rotated one full circle, a path has been carved. The result? No more hurt, no more heart.
One option the boy in the pigpen had was to walk back into the masquerade party and pretend everything was fine. He could have carved his integrity until the pain disappeared. He could have done what millions do. He could have spent a lifetime in the pigpen pretending it was a palace. But he didn’t.
Something told him that this was the moment of—and for—truth.
He looked into the water. The face he saw wasn’t pretty—muddy and swollen. He looked away. “Don’t think about it. You’re no worse off than anybody else. Things will get better tomorrow.”
The lies anticipated a receptive ear. They’d always found one before. “Not this time,” he muttered. And he stared at his reflection.
“How far I have fallen.” His first words of truth.
He looked into his own eyes. He thought of his father. “They always said I had your eyes.” He could see the look of hurt on his father’s face when he told him he was leaving.
“How I must have hurt you.”
A crack zigzagged across the boy’s heart.
A tear splashed into the pool. Another soon followed. Then another. Then the dam broke. He buried his face in his dirty hands as the tears did what tears do so well; they flushed out his soul.
His face was still wet as he sat near the pool. For the first time in a long time he thought of home. The memories warmed him. Memories of dinner-table laughter. Memories of a warm bed. Memories of evenings on the porch with his father as they listened to the hypnotic ring of the crickets.
“Father.” He said the word aloud as he looked at himself. “They used to say I looked like you. Now you wouldn’t even recognize me. Boy, I blew it, didn’t I
?”
He stood up and began to walk.
The road home was longer than he remembered. When he last traveled it, he turned heads because of his style. If he turned heads this time, it was because of his stink. His clothes were torn, his hair matted, and his feet black. But that didn’t bother him, because for the first time in a calendar of heartaches, he had a clean conscience.
He was going home. He was going home a changed man. Not demanding that he get what he deserved, but willing to take whatever he could get. “Give me” had been replaced with “help me,” and his defiance had been replaced with repentance.
He came asking for everything with nothing to give in return. He had no money. He had no excuses.
And he had no idea how much his father had missed him.
He had no idea the number of times his father had paused between chores to look out the front gate for his son. The boy had no idea the number of times his father had awakened from restless sleep, gone into the son’s room, and sat on the boy’s bed. And the son would have never believed the hours the father had sat on the porch next to the empty rocking chair, looking, longing to see that familiar figure, that stride, that face.
As the boy came around the bend that led up to his house, he rehearsed his speech one more time.
“Father, I have sinned against heaven and against you.”
He approached the gate and placed his hand on the latch. He began to lift it, then he paused. His plan to go home suddenly seemed silly. “What’s the use?” he heard himself asking himself. “What chance do I have?” He ducked, turned around, and began to walk away.
Then he heard the footsteps. He heard the slap, slap, slap of sandals. Someone was running. He didn’t turn to look. It’s probably a servant coming to chase me away or my big brother wanting to know what I’m doing back home. He began to leave.
But the voice he heard was not the voice of a servant nor the voice of his brother; it was the voice of his father.
“Son!”
“Father?”
He turned to open the gate, but the father already had. The son looked at his father standing at the entrance. Tears glistened on his cheeks as arms stretched from east to west inviting the son to come home.
“Father, I have sinned.” The words were muffled as the boy buried his face in his father’s shoulder.
The two wept. For a forever they stood at the gate intertwined as one. Words were unnecessary. Repentance had been made, forgiveness had been given.
The boy was home.
If there is a scene in this story that deserves to be framed, it’s the one of the father’s outstretched hands. His tears are moving. His smile is stirring. But his hands call us home. Imagine those hands. Strong fingers. Palms wrinkled with lifelines. Stretching open like a wide gate, leaving entrance as the only option.
When Jesus told this parable of the loving father, I wonder, did he use his hands? When he got to this point in the story, did he open his arms to illustrate the point?
Did he perceive the thoughts of those in the audience who were thinking, “I could never go home. Not after my life”? Did he see a housewife look at the ground and a businessman shake his head as if to say, “I can’t start over. I’ve made too big a mess”? And did he open his arms even wider as if to say, “Yes. Yes, you can. You can come home”?
Whether he did that day or not, I don’t know. But I know that he did later. He later stretched his hands as open as he could. He forced his arms so wide apart that it hurt. And to prove that those arms would never fold and those hands would never close, he had them nailed open.
They still are.
CHAPTER 12
THE FISH AND THE FALLS
A LEGEND OF GRACE
THE JOURNEY
Once upon a distant time, when time was not and rivers had no names, there was a fish.
Born in the cascading bubbles of a rocky mountain stream, this freckled fish learned early the passion of play. He was at home in the water. He raced back and forth in the harbor made by a fallen log. He dared, on occasion, to cross the rapids by darting from rock to rock.
Each morning he witnessed the sun lift the shadowy curtain of night. It was his daily invitation to dance in the clean waters. Then, as the sun climbed higher, its warmth would lull him to slowness, giving him time to stare through the waters at the tall trees that waved and the furred visitors whose tongues would drink and then disappear.
But if the day was his time to play, the night was his time to think. This young trout, not content to know so little, kept his eyes open while others closed theirs. What is the source of this stream? Where does it go? Why is it here? Why am I here? He pondered the questions that others never asked. And he listened at length for the answers.
Then one night he heard the roar.
The night was so bright that the moon saw herself in the stream. The fish, awake with his thoughts, recognized for the first time a noise he’d always heard.
A roar. It rumbled under the river. It vibrated the water. Suddenly the fish knew why the water was always moving.
Who is the maker of this sound? Who is the giver of this noise?
He had to know.
He swam all night without stopping, nourished by his need to know. The roar grew louder. Its thunder both frightened and compelled him.
He swam until the stars turned pale and the gray pebbles regained their colors. When he could swim no more, weariness overcame curiosity, and he stopped. He slept.
THE ENCOUNTER
The sun was warm on the trout’s back. In his sleep he dreamt he was playing again. Dashing between the rocks, daring the water to catch him. He dreamt he was at home.
Then he awoke, remembering his pilgrimage.
He heard the roar. It sounded near. He opened his eyes and there it was. A wall of white foam. Water tumbling, then falling, then flying, then crashing.
It was like nothing he’d ever seen.
I will climb it and see it.
He swam to where the water crashed into the river. He attempted to swim upwards. He would ascend the falls by brute force. But the onrush of the water was too strong. Undaunted, he swam until he could swim no more, then he slept.
The next day he attempted to jump to the top. He plunged downward, deep below the churning foam. He swam deep. He swam until the water was still and dark and the roar was distant. Then he turned upward.
His fins fought from one side to the other, pushing and propelling the trout until he was swimming faster than he’d ever swum. He swam straight for the surface. Higher and higher, faster and faster. He raced through the calm waters toward the surface. He broke through the top of the water and soared high into the air. He soared so high he was sure he would land on the top of the waterfall. But he didn’t. He barely rose above the foam. Then he fell.
I’ ll try again. Down he swam. Up he pushed. Out he flew. And down he tumbled.
He tried again. And again. And again. Ever trying to reach the top of the wall. Ever failing at his quest.
Finally night fell and the moon stood vigil over the weary young trout.
He awoke with renewed strength and a new plan. He found a safe pool off to the side of the base of the waterfall. Through the still waters he looked up. He would swim against the gentle trickle of the water as it poured over the rocks. Pleased with his wisdom, he set out. Doggedly he pushed his body to do what it wasn’t made to do.
For an entire passing of the sun through the sky he struggled. He pushed on—climbing, falling; climbing, falling; climbing, falling. At one point, when his muscles begged for relief, he actually reached a ledge from which he could look out over the water below. Swollen with his achievements he leaned too far out and tumbled headfirst into the calm pool from which he began.
Wearied from his failure, he slept.
He dreamt of the roar. He dreamt of the glory of leaving the mountain stream and dwelling in the waterfall. But when he awoke, he was still at the bottom.
When he awo
ke, the moon was still high. It discouraged him to realize that his dream was not reality. He wondered if it was worth it. He wondered if those who never sought to know were happier.
He considered returning. The current would carry him home.
I’ve lived with the roar all my life and never heard it. I could simply not hear it again.
But how do you not hear the yearning of your heart? How do you turn away from discovery? How can you be satisfied with existence once you’ve lived with purpose?
The fish wanted nothing more than to ascend the water. But he was out of choices. He didn’t know what to do. He screamed at the waterfall. “Why are you so harsh? Why are you so resistant? Why won’t you help me? Don’t you see I can’t do it on my own? I need you!”
Just then the roar of the water began to subside. The foaming slowed. The fish looked around. The water was growing still!
Then, he felt the current again. He felt the familiar push of the rushing water. Only this time the push was from behind. The water gained momentum, slowly at first, then faster and faster until the fish found himself being carried to the tall stone wall over which had flowed the water. The wall was bare and big.
For a moment he feared he would be slammed into it. But just as he reached the rocks, a wave formed beneath him. The trout was lifted upwards. Up he went out of the water on the tip of a rising tongue. The wave elevated him up the wall.
By now the forest was silent. The animals stood still as if they witnessed majesty. The wind ceased its stirring. The moon tilted ever so slightly in an effort not to miss the miracle.
All of nature watched as the fish rode the wave of grace. All of nature rejoiced when he reached the top. The stars raced through the blackness. The moon tilted backwards and rocked in sweet satisfaction. Bears danced. Birds hugged. The wind whistled. And the leaves applauded.
The fish was where he had longed to be. He was in the presence of the roar. What he couldn’t do, the river had done. He knew immediately he would spend forever relishing the mystery.