I can only think of the prodigal as Life, born of God, and by Him entrusted to matter; inheriting the possibility of His immortality, but under conditions of discontinuity and death; yet still dimly remembering its Father, and disconsolate in its poverty.

I can only think of it as a fledgling spirit of divinity; self-manifest in all living things; active but preconscious in their needs and appetites and struggles, and using these as goads and carrots in service to its great intention; ever and always experimenting, foraying, rejecting, failing, choosing again, if by any mechanism it can create for itself a fleshly temple meet to receive and house Him who would come, as the Way and the Shepherd and the Light.

Why does an oak tree always produce acorns?  Because there is, vital in it, a particular intention, a teleology, requiring its protoplasm to a particular end.  A law of nature, with a purpose and a goal.  Then let us think of all organisms, from the microbe to the mastodon, as ‘cells’ of a Tree, with human being for its fruit – exactly because there is, desperate and adamant in that Tree, the prodigal, seeking his return home.

In common speech, which more often than we realize bears divine wisdom, we talk intuitively of life: “the streets were full of life,” “life on other planets,” and so forth; and we credit it with purpose: Nature intends, Nature punishes. 

But have we the courage of our intuitions?

The acorn is the product of the genius of the oak.  Human being is the product of the prodigal of Life finally returning home.  And the joyous reunion is the historic welcoming embrace of God with weary and hungry and humbled embodied Life, along with its new vestments: the robe of eternity, the ring of responsibility, and the sandals of journeys to come.