Come home before your speech is ready.

What it meant then

Tax collectors and sinners were gathering to listen to Jesus, and the Pharisees and scribes grumbled that he welcomed sinners and ate with them (Luke 15:1–2). Jesus answered with three stories of lost things: a sheep, a coin and a son (15:3–32). In the third, a younger son asks for his share of the estate, wastes it in a distant country, and in a famine ends up feeding pigs, animals the Law of Moses called unclean (Leviticus 11:7). He is so hungry he longs for their food (15:11–16).

For today

The son comes home with a speech. He prepared it while he was still feeding pigs: I have sinned, I am not worthy, make me one of your hired servants (15:18–19). It is honest, but it is also a plan: if he can no longer be a son, perhaps he can earn a place at the back of the house. Then his father sees him from far away and runs.

Look at what happens to the speech. The son starts it, but he never reaches the last line, the one about the hired servants (15:21). His father is already calling for the robe, the ring and the sandals. The story does not say the son’s motives were pure; he came back because he was hungry. Nor does it make his confession pointless; he says it, and it is true. But the welcome was not the reward for a good speech. The father saw him while he was still far off, before he had said a word.

Maybe you are rehearsing your own speech: to God after years away, or to someone you hurt, sitting in the car outside their house and going over the words one more time. Say what is true, and do not wait until it sounds perfect. The son got up and went, hungry and unpolished. That was enough for his father to start running.