There's a moment in the parable of the prodigal son that most of us gloss over.
We know the story. The younger son who squanders everything, comes to his senses in a pig field, and makes his way home. The father who runs to meet him. The robe, the ring, the fatted calf. The celebration.
It is a beautiful picture of grace.
But this week, something stopped me in a verse I have read hundreds of times. Luke 15:28.
The older son heard the music from the field. He asked a servant what was happening. And when he found out that his brother had come home – that there was a party in full swing – he was angry. And he refused to go in.
I thought about that for a while.
Because I think many of us know exactly how that felt.
You have been in the field. Working. Preparing. Learning. Turning up consistently even when it has been hard. You have been faithful – or at least trying to be. And then you look up and see someone else celebrating. Someone whose journey did not look as disciplined as yours. Someone who seems to have arrived somewhere you are still working toward.
And something rises in you that you would rather not name.
It might look like detachment. Or scrolling past their posts without joy. Or a tight smile when someone asks if you have seen how well they are doing.
But underneath it? Resentment. The quiet, uncomfortable kind. The kind you feel guilty about even as you feel it.
Can I gently say – this is one of the most common hidden struggles among ambitious women who are waiting on a promise? And it is worth being honest about.
Verse of the Week
'But he was angry and would not go in. Therefore his father came out and pleaded with him.'
—Luke 15:28
What strikes me most in this verse isn’t the son's anger.
It’s the father's response to it.
He doesn't dismiss the older son. He doesn't say, You have no right to feel this way – get back in there. He comes out to him. He leaves the party to find the son standing in the dark, arms crossed, hurting. And he entreats him. He speaks tenderly.
He says: Son, you are always with me, and everything I have is yours.
Everything I have is yours.
Not will be yours. Not could be yours if you pull yourself together. Everything He has is yours.
That is the love of God. Not punishing, not impatient, not comparing you unfavourably to someone who just came home. He comes to where you are. He finds you in the field of your frustration. And He reminds you of what has always been true.
And this is where I want to be honest with you.
Resentment is one of the most subtle forms of self-sabotage there is. Not because it makes us bad people, but because we cannot receive what we despise in others.
When we harbour bitterness toward someone else's breakthrough, we close something in ourselves. We cannot celebrate what we secretly resent, and we cannot step into what we are inwardly rejecting.
The older son would not go in.
He stood outside the very thing he had access to – the father's house, the father's abundance, the father's table – because he was too hurt to walk through the door.
If there is someone whose success has been lodged like a splinter under your skin, this is a good moment to take it to the Lord. Let Him deal with the root of it. He already knows it’s there. He has come out to find you.
There's also a word of encouragement here for the woman who feels like she is still in the field.
Keep sowing.
The father's words to the older son were not a rebuke, they were a reminder. You have not been forgotten. You have not been overlooked. The faithfulness you have shown in the field is not invisible to God, even when it feels invisible to the world.
Seasons of preparation are not seasons of punishment. They are seasons of development – and the harvest is still coming.
This week, perhaps consider an honest prayer: Lord, search me. Is there anyone's success I have been struggling to celebrate? Heal that in me because I want to be a woman who can rejoice with those who rejoice, knowing that the table is large enough for all of us.
And then stay in the field. Keep sowing. Come back to the Father's heart when you feel the distance growing.
He will come out and find you. He always does.
Until next week,
Have a blessed day and keep shining!✨
Cheryl
