(Image credit: Shutterstock)

Irungu turned for the umpteenth time on his makeshift bed. This he did as if when he found the right position, he’d find the elusive sleep. It was definitely quite late, evidenced by the quietness outside in the night, the only sounds being those of neighborhood dogs barking, crickets, and some occasional croaking of frogs from the sleuth outside the pig pen.

Not that he often had a good night sleep, a practical impossibility with bedbugs all over him, and a tattered semblance of a blanket, but today was quite an exception. Often times, the tiredness from feeding the pigs on a hungry stomach, in addition to carrying of feeds from the stores to the feeding troughs, was so much that by the end of the day he would literally collapse on the bed out of exhaustion.

In the last couple of days however, Irungu had been finding it increasingly difficult to find sleep, today being the height of it. He had no way of telling the time, but he could estimate to around 3.00 AM. After a couple of more turns, he could hear a call to prayer from a distant mosque indicating it was already 5:00 AM.

By this time, he had mastered the number and position of trusses under the ceiling-less roof of the shed he called his bed room. What could one do when he had no sleep, but count the trusses on the under side of the tin roof?

Fortunately, there was some light rays from the security light outside, coming through spaces between the second hand iron sheets that made the shack roof. Another interesting occupation for the night was observing the ant formations as they journeyed from one end of the roof to the other in such synchrony they would render military match child play. These activities served as breaks to Irungu’s recurring thoughts of the good old days, which he had tried to brush off his mind previously, but today they were overly insistent.

In one instance, his mind went to the days before he left home and the picture of his bed room came to mind. It had been a cozy room, incomparable to the current place he was staying.

At home he did not know how the room got cleaned or even who did it. With servants all over the house, he only needed to put his used clothes in the dirty clothes bin and they’d be clean, folded in the wardrobe when he came back.

He did not know where food came from. He had to only appear on the dinning table at meal times and eat to his liking and fill. This, as he thought was a complete opposite of what he was experiencing now. He was emaciated for lack of good food. The clothes on him were tattered and he could not even remember when they were last off his body leave alone when they were last washed. He had literally no clothes to change to – in fact the jeans trouser he was putting on he had collected from a waste bin at the gate of the pig owners’ house.

“What would it be like to be back to my father’s house?” he had asked himself.

This question had been brushed aside previously, as it had sounded to him absurd or not even conceivable. After all he had taken all his inheritance and disconnected from his family.

All that had remained at home was practically his brother’s. But today, the thought of home had lingered and he had not so insisted to brush it off. He allowed his mind to ponder all the possibilities.

Irungu thought he had not even the audacity to call that home. He remembered vividly the words to his father, “Father, give me my share of the estate1.” This literary meant that he had no share of the estate back home.

That however did not seem to stop the thoughts of home. The issue about the estate were a non issue in light of his condition with an empty stomach. Then as if a light bulb went on in his mind, he told himself,

”How many of my Father’s hired men have food to spare, and here I am starving to death. I will set out and go to my father and say to him: Father, I have sinned against heaven and against you. I am no longer worthy to be called your son, make me like one of your hired men2”

By the time it was daylight, Irungu had made up his mind.

He was going back home.

He reasoned that it was better to face the wrath of his father, the jeers of his friends, and the embarrassment from onlookers, than the life he was living. A doorkeeper in his father’s house than these tents of wickedness3.

The journey back home was anything but easy. From the laborious walk giving a through beating to the already worn out body frame, to the wrestling of the mind and the second guessing of not knowing what to expect.

Would the father accept his proposition? Would he even want to see or listen to him? “But then, “, he continued reasoning,

“What is there to loose? If my father accepts my proposition, I live, if not I have tried. Why stay here and die? ”

To ease his anxiety , he told himself that the best is to wait for the reception he receives as nothing depended on him, but instead everything depended on his father’s reception of him.

With three days of walking, sometimes covering his face as he approached home lest somebody recognized him, his pace had reduced to slow steps, and a pause after every couple of them.

It was mid morning when he finally got to the finely paved road that the drive leading to his father’s homestead was. He could recognize that the trees that lined the drive way had grown since he’d been away. They now were overarching the way making some good covering and shade from the already scorching sun.

Part of him felt a sense of unworthiness stepping into the clean walkway with his shabby clothing on a skinny frame his body had become. On the other hand, part of him, albeit awkwardly had a serene feeling of belonging. That helped a bit in the trepidation he kept feeling as he imagined what awaited past the gate that stood in front of him just ahead, or would he even get beyond it?

These lingering thoughts did not take long to be responded to as they were shortly interrupted by an unmistakably familiar figure suddenly opening the gate and running towards him. He had to turn and look back and see whether there was anyone behind him that his father could be running to.

“How could he be running towards me after I have messed myself up like this? Maybe he wants to be sure I do not come any closer to his home!”, Irungu wondered as he stood waiting to see what would happen next.

His father, upon reaching where Irungu was, threw his hand around him and kissed him4.    

Half confused, half delighted, Irungu was not sure how to respond to his father’s reception. He started mumbling his rehearsed script,

“Father, I have sinned against heaven and against you. I am no longer worthy to be called your son.5”

By this time father and son were just about the gate, and the servants who had curiously followed their master to check why he had suddenly ran out of the gate uncharacteristically were also there waiting on their master. As if he had not heard his son, the father instead of responding to him, addressed the servants saying,

“Quick, bring the best robe and put on him, put a ring on his finger, and sandals on his feet. Bring the fattened calf and kill it. Let’s have a feast and celebrate. For this son of mine was dead, and is alive again. He was lost and is found.6 ”

The rest of the day went on as if Irungu was in a daze. The excitement and the joy his coming back home brought his father was beyond his wildest imagination for a reception. The servants in response to the father’s instruction treated him like royalty, the very opposite of what he had asked of his father, to be treated as one of them.

The only interruption to their celebration was his brother’s reaction , as a servant told Irungu what he heard of the elder brother confronting their father,

“Look, all these years I have been slaving for you and never disobeyed your orders. Yet you never gave me even a young goat so that I could celebrate with my friends.7”  

That cut real deep into Irungu’s heart, but it was was short-lived as he heard their Father’s response,

“My Son, you are always with me and everything I have is yours. But we had to celebrate and be glad because this brother of yours was dead, and is alive again. He was lost and is found.8 ”

To Irungu, only his father’s response mattered, and he knew, the brother also was obedient to the father and hence was able to receive him back. He was accepted back by the father and that was all that mattered.

That evening as Irungu lay on his cozy bed, he contrasted the realities coming to his senses had brought to his life against his life just three days prior. There were no more bedbugs, no trusses to count , and no safari ants to monitor. There was even no room for such thoughts as he easily drifted into sleep with a smile on his face. As he transitioned to dreamland he had this humbling thought of how little he knew his Father,

“but let the one who boasts boast about this: that they have the understanding to know me, that I am the Lord, who exercises kindness,  justice and righteousness on earth, for in these I delight,” declares the Lord9.”

References

  1. Luke 15:12 (NIV)
  2. Luke 15:17-19 (NIV)
  3. Psalms 84:10 (Paraphrased)
  4. Luke 15:20b (NIV)
  5. Luke 15:21 (NIV)
  6. Luke 15:22-24 (NIV)
  7. Luke 15:29 (NIV)
  8. Luke 15:31,32 (NIV)
  9. Jeremiah 9:24