The Far Country 

Every once in a while out at the jail I run into someone I know or am vaguely familiar with. Someone from childhood, perhaps, or someone who knows of me via someone else or has heard of my church. The connections are usually fairly distant. Recently, however, I was out on one of the units and I ran into someone whose parent I know. Which is a different kind of thing entirely.

The guy in question had overheard my name while I was talking to another inmate. “You’re name is Ryan Dueck, right?” “Yes,” I replied. “My mom knows you,” he said with a grin. I asked him to elaborate. It wasn’t someone I knew well, but I definitely made the connection. We chatted a bit more, he asked about how to get a rosary, when this or that service was, etc. As I was preparing to leave I said, unthinkingly, instinctively, and fairly stupidly, “Well, if I see your mom, I’ll make sure tell her I saw you.” The grin that had been on his face throughout our conversation altered slightly. It became tinged with a bit of resignation, weariness, maybe even irritation. “Nah, don’t do that,” he said. “She doesn’t need to know where I am…” His voice trailed off.

I’ve written before that the story of the lost son(s) from Luke 15 is a story that can tell our own personal stories differently at different times in our lives. Sometimes we are the younger son needing to stagger on home from our reckless and destructive choices. Sometimes we are the older brother needing to dial back the self-righteousness and celebrate unmerited grace. Sometimes we are the heart-sick father scanning the horizon for a child who wanted nothing to do with us. Sometimes, it could be a combination of all three. 

This is hardly a unique insight, I know. There’s a reason this story is so many people’s favourite in all of Scripture. But I suspect it is a story that is felt more than understood on a strictly cognitive level anyway. And I felt it when I spoke to this guy at the jail. I thought of his mother and the ongoing pain she must surely be enduring (I later glanced at his file and saw a long history of jail time). I could feel her agony—the agony of wanting something so very different for your child, of never imagining that you would be the parent of a child who would do x, of imagining so many more hopeful and joy-filled possibilities for this person that you poured your life and love into. I could feel her shame. I could imagine how she might wish the ground would swallow her up in social settings when people were casually rehearsing their adult kids’ successes to one another, speaking of sporting conquests and scholarships and weddings and careers and grandkids on the horizon. I could feel her dread anticipating that awful moment when someone turns to her and says, “So tell me about your kids!” 

The King James Version is not typically my go-too translation, but occasionally it renders things in more poetic or poignant or somehow resonant language than more current English translations. In most translations of Jesus’ famous story, the son demands his inheritance from his father (basically saying, “I don’t want you, just what I can use you for”), and then goes to a “distant region” where he begins his downward self-destructive spiral. But I’ve always preferred the KJV’s translation here: not a “distant region” but a “far country.” I don’t know why, but that one connects on a deeper level.

It speaks (at least to me) not of mere geography but of the existential terrain that is being negotiated. The far country is where you are far from who you are, far from who you were made to be, far from home, far from what you know you need. Far from God. The far country is a lonely place, drenched with regret and self-loathing; it is the place where we destroy ourselves in the futile hope that others might feel some of our pain, too. The far country is where that which was broken clouds the landscape of our lives. The far country can be experienced even when we don’t go anywhere. Was not the father in Jesus’ story also, in some sense, stuck in the far country as long as his son was off destroying himself? I can’t think of many parents who wouldn’t say, at least on some level, “yes.” 

The great hope of Jesus’ story is that that the far country can be left behind. That homecomings can happen. That forgiveness, mercy, and grace can be experienced, no matter how much pain has been inflicted in every direction. This is the hope of the gospel, of course. That what is lost can be found and what is broken can be mended. That there is no wound so deep that love cannot heal it. 

This was my prayer for the guy I encountered at the jail. It was my prayer for his mom. It is my prayer for all the prodigals and those who wait for them, however long and however hard the waiting is.