Collapsing in the arms of Love

By Heather Khym

Heather Khym, cohost of the internationally popular Abiding Together Podcast and the co-founder of Life Restoration Ministries, took some time to pray with Kate’s original painting of the prodigal son moment titled ‘Coming Home.’ She shares with us what she experiences while praying via Visio Divina with this new painting, a way of encountering the Lord through Sacred Art.

Desperation – it’s such an unsettling experience. The longing for what we need in those moments is so intense that we often feel it reverberating through our entire body. A sense of panic invades us because we don’t know if our agony will ever be taken away. Desperation and hopelessness are close companions because we only feel desperate when we’ve come to the end and we’ve exhausted every effort and are still tormented by the pain and our inability to fix it.

I see this desperation in the prodigal son – with his filthy, scraped body. There he kneels, barefoot and stripped of most of his clothes, vulnerable, poor, and laid bare by the cruelty of the world. His poverty extends far beyond his lack of money; his disheveled frame reveals the deeper poverty within his soul. I know this place. If I’m honest, by the time I find myself there, it’s because I’ve first exhausted all my idols. I have many places I go, other than God, to find escape and fleeting pleasure. I convince myself for a time that they are working, that I’m “fine”. I’m reacting to my discomfort by seeking the quickest avenue to anesthetize myself from it all. I attempt to treat the symptom, rather than seek true healing and freedom. Idols never satisfy–they never bring life, and only lead to further frustration, deeper fractures within, and emptiness. Like the prodigal son, I come to the end of my idols, left with nothing but desperation.

Like the prodigal son, I come to the end of my idols, left with nothing but desperation.

Whether we arrive at this place because of our own depravity or because of an unrelenting battering of painful experiences, when we find ourselves here, at the bottom with nothing left, we face some of our deepest questions: Does God see me? Does He care? Will He help me? It is also at this place where we are pressed to find out because when everything the world offers has failed us, all we have left is to turn to the One who surpasses every worldly thing. I love that the prodigal son doesn’t have to make it all the way home before encountering his father. I love that the father runs to meet him. The father sees his son’s exhaustion, his pain, and poverty. Instead of making the son do it all himself – or worse, watching him collapse in the dirt – the father, having a heart overwhelmed with love and compassion for his son, places himself directly in front of the impoverished boy allowing him to completely collapse into his arms.

The father, having a heart overwhelmed with love and compassion for his son, places himself directly in front of the impoverished boy allowing him to completely collapse into his arms.

I can’t get that part of Kate’s painting of the Prodigal Son out of my mind: the son collapsing into the loving arms of the father. Finally, he has found a place that can bear the weight of his suffering, his ache, his sin, and all his desires. What’s more stunning is that it’s not a lifeless thing that can’t provide. It’s Love Himself, the Love that can satisfy, the Love that heals, that transforms–the Love that can hold the weight of every burden, bear all things, and never fail.

Could we allow our desperation to move beyond numbing and coping, and bring us to collapse in the
loving arms of the Father?

If you want to pray with this sacred image, too, you can find it here + snag your own print!

Click to listen to Kim Zember share her personal experience while praying with this painting, as well!!