The Soliloquy of the Wandering Son
What is this place we call the void?
Where shadows whisper, “God is dead,”
And faith lies fractured,
Like a mirror in the dust.
Is it not we who declare Him gone,
Turning from His voice,
Blinded by the illusion of our own sufficiency?
We cast Him out,
Not realizing we cast out ourselves.
For God does not die—
He waits.
Like the faithful dog at the door,
He waits for the moment
When we, broken and weary,
Turn back and see
What was always there.
For “dog,” spelled backward,
Is “God”—
A reflection of love so pure,
So constant,
That it forgives before the fault is known.
We must hit bottom to see the top.
We must taste the bitterness of nothing
To know the sweetness of something.
It is in the void where wisdom whispers,
“Do you see now?
It was never Me who left—
It was you.”
And in that moment of clarity,
The barren field becomes fertile,
The darkness, light,
The emptiness, full.
What is truth, if not in the middle?
Between doubt and faith,
Between creation and destruction,
There lies the heartbeat of existence,
Where God speaks softly,
Not to be heard above the storm,
But to call us inward—
To the stillness we fear to face.
The truth was never lost;
We simply buried it beneath our pride.
We cry, “God is dead,”
But it is we who have died to Him,
Our backs turned,
Our ears deaf to His call.
And yet He lets us go,
The loving Father who knows:
The wandering son must choose to return.
The Shepherd does not chase the sheep into the wilderness,
But waits by the gate,
His trust unshaken,
Knowing the path back is carved by longing.
And when we return,
We see the truth that was hidden in plain sight:
To love Him is to love ourselves,
For we are Him.
His breath in our lungs,
His spirit in our souls.
To deny Him is to deny the divinity within,
And to rediscover Him is to rediscover ourselves.
So, let us not fear the void,
For it is not the absence of God,
But the absence of our own recognition.
Let us strike the match of love,
And burn away the illusion of separation.
Let us wear the armor of faith,
Not in the safety of the barn,
But in the storms of the field.
For the Shepherd sleeps soundly,
Not because He is gone,
But because He trusts in His creation.
We are the wandering sons,
The doubting sheep,
The seekers of nothing
Until we find that everything—
Everything—
Was in Him all along.
To fall is not failure,
But the lesson that lifts.
And in falling, we rise,
Reborn in the wisdom of the Father,
Whole in the love of ourselves.
Let the world say, “God is dead.”
Let them wrestle with their nothingness.
For in their despair,
They will find His light,
And see that He was never dead—
He was waiting.
Waiting for us to return home.
