You Won't Be Found Until You're Lost

Part Three — Finding

These questions kept pulling me back to a story I had known since I was young — the parable of the prodigal son.

A man had two sons. The younger one came to his father and said: Give me my share of the inheritance. The father divided his wealth between them. A few days later, the younger son sold everything, traveled to a distant country, and spent it all — wasting everything in reckless living. When it was gone, a great famine hit that land and he found himself with nothing. He went and hired himself out to a local man who sent him to tend pigs in his fields. He was so hungry he would have eaten what the pigs were eating, and no one gave him anything.

Then he came to his senses. He said: How many of my father's servants have bread enough to spare, and here I am dying of hunger. I will go back to my father and say — Father, I have sinned against God and against you. I am no longer worthy to be called your son. Take me on as one of your servants.

So he got up and went home. While he was still far off, his father saw him and was filled with compassion. He ran to his son, threw his arms around him, and kissed him. The son said: Father, I have sinned against God and against you. I am no longer worthy to be called your son. But the father said to his servants: Bring the best robe and put it on him. Put a ring on his finger and sandals on his feet. Bring the fattened calf and kill it. Let's eat and celebrate — because this son of mine was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is found.

The older son was out in the field. When he came back and heard the music and celebrations, he called one of the servants and asked what was happening. The servant told him his brother had returned and his father had killed the fattened calf. The older son was angry and refused to go in. His father came out and pleaded with him. The older son said: I have been working for you like a servant all these years and never disobeyed you. You never gave me even a small goat to celebrate with my friends. But when this son of yours who wasted your money comes back, you kill the fattened calf for him. The father said: My son, you are always with me, and everything I have is yours. But it was right to celebrate — because your brother was dead and is alive again, was lost and is found.

This is exactly our story. We Afghans do not know the value of what we have been given. We meet God's gifts with arrogance and ingratitude.

Now that I have lived for a time away from home, away from family and friends, I want to share what I have learned.

Gratitude is not a small thing. If a person grows up in the soil where they were born — sleeping safely in their mother's arms, leaning on a father, growing alongside a brother, confiding in a sister, breathing the air of their homeland — they have something that binds them in a way that cannot easily be described. A deep quiet. When you have all of that and you know its worth, it is an enormous gift. When you don't, what remains is a regret that has no easy words.

And the God who gave us all of this — who is closer to us than our own jugular vein, as the Quran says — we push away from Him with our sins and carelessness. Is He not generous enough that if we turn back to Him, He would forgive us? That He would repair what was broken and lift the loneliness from our shoulders?

Without doubt, He is the most merciful and the most forgiving.