Rembrandt's Final Homecoming

In 1668, a bankrupt and grieving Rembrandt van Rijn picked up his brush to paint what would become his final masterpiece: The Return of the Prodigal Son. By then, the Dutch master had lost nearly everything. His beloved wife Saskia had died young. His fortune had been seized by creditors. His companion Hendrickje and his son Titus had both preceded him to the grave. The man who once commanded the highest fees in Amsterdam now worked in a cramped studio with trembling hands.

Yet those trembling hands produced something extraordinary. In the painting, a ragged young man kneels before his father, face buried against the old man's chest. The father's hands — one broad and strong, the other gentle and curved — rest on his son's shoulders with a tenderness that transcends technique. In the shadows behind them stands the elder brother, stiff and watching, his face caught between duty and resentment.

Rembrandt understood this story because he had lived it. He had been the younger son, squandering his gifts in Amsterdam's golden age of excess. He had been the elder brother, proud of his own mastery. And by the end, stripped of everything, he had become the father — knowing that love is most real when it reaches toward someone who has nothing left to offer.

That is the God Jesus reveals in Luke 15. Not a God who demands we earn our way back, but a Father whose hands are already outstretched, waiting to rest on the shoulders of anyone who turns toward home.