Prodigal Son

   When he died, 40,000 men followed his coffin to the grave; the nation had never seen anything like it. His students sent an open letter to his widow that read, his “ideals will never be forgotten. From generation to generation we shall hand them down as a precious inheritance from our great and beloved teacher. . . . [He] will always stand out rightly before us in the battle of life; for it was he who taught us the possibility of preserving the purity of the soul undefiled in every position of life and in all conceivable conditions and circumstances.”

The man of whom they spoke was the great Russian novelist, Fyodor Dostoyevsky. As a young man, Dostoyevsky was exiled for ten years to Siberia. Throughout the horrors of his imprisonment, he carried with him a New Testament that two women slipped to him when his guard’s back was turned. During his long exile, the Bible was his only solace. And of all the stories in it, the one that affected him most was the story of the prodigal son—his situation in a Siberian prison was very much like the pigpen to which the prodigal came.

When Dostoyevsky was released and allowed back into society, the parable of the prodigal was a constant companion, which he referenced in some of his books. Just before he died, Dostoyevsky asked his wife to again read the parable to him . A few minutes after she finished, he died. Would that all who think they’ve traveled too far from God to return to Him learn the story of the prodigal son. We’re never so far away, or so far down, or so long gone that we can’t come home. And when we do, God throws a party in our honor. And doesn’t that say something about divine grace!

Kenny Chumbley