The Return Of The Prodigal Son

With over a million copies sold, this classic work is essential reading for all who ask, “Where has my struggle led me?” A chance encounter with a reproduction of Rembrandt’s The Return of the Prodigal Son catapulted Henri Nouwen on an unforgettable spiritual adventure. Here he shares the deeply personal and resonant meditation that led him to discover the place within where God has chosen to dwell. As Nouwen reflects on Rembrandt’s painting in light of his own life journey, he evokes a powerful drama of the classic parable in a rich, captivating way that is sure to reverberate in the hearts of readers. Nouwen probes the several movements of the parable: the younger son’s return, the father’s restoration of sonship, the elder son’s resentfulness, and the father’s compassion. The themes of homecoming, affirmation, and reconciliation will be newly discovered by all who have known loneliness, dejection, jealousy, or anger. The challenge to love as God loves, and to be loved as God’s beloved, will be seen as the ultimate revelation of the parable known to Christians throughout time, and is here represented with a vigor and power fresh for our times.

"Essays and talks on the theme of community by Henri Nouwen, the popular writer and spiritual teacher"--

Henri Nouwen’s never-before-published story of his surprising friendship with a traveling trapeze troupe. During the last five years of his life, best-selling spiritual author Henri J. M. Nouwen became close to The Flying Rodleighs, a trapeze troupe in a traveling circus. Like Nouwen’s own life, a trapeze act is full of artistry, exhilarating successes, crushing failures and continual forgiveness. He wrote about his experience in a genre new to him: creative non-fiction. In Flying, Falling, Catching, Nouwen's colleague and friend Carolyn Whitney-Brown presents his unpublished trapeze writings framed by the true story of his rescue through a hotel window by paramedics during his first heart attack. Readers will meet Nouwen as a spiritual risk taker who was transformed through his engagement with these trapeze artists, as well as his participation in the Civil Rights movement, his life in community with people with intellectual disabilities, his personal growth through friendships during the 1990s AIDS pandemic, and other unexpected encounters. What will we do with our lives, and with whom will we do it? In this story of flying and catching, Nouwen invites us all to let go and fly, even when we are afraid of falling.

Home Tonight follows the path of Henri Nouwen’s spiritual homecoming. More than three years prior to writing his great classic, The Return of the Prodigal Son, Nouwen suffered a personal breakdown followed by a time of healing solitude when he encountered Rembrandt’s famous painting. Within his solitude he reflected on and identified with the parable’s characters and experienced profound and inspiring life lessons. This captivating book was created from never-before-published materials that formed the basis of the small workshop inspired by Nouwen’s intimate encounter with Rembrandt’s painting. Readers are led to welcome their unique Belovedness through practices of “spiritual listening,” journaling, and communing with God, thus connecting personally with the unique, unconditional love of the One who created them. Home Tonight is a practical guide for the inner journey home.

The Return of the Prodigal Son: A Story of Homecoming is Henri Nouwen’s most popular book, selling over one million copies since its publication in 1992. What accounts for its ongoing popularity as a spiritual classic? Drawing from extensive research in Nouwen’s archives, author and Chief Archivist for the Henri Nouwen Legacy Trust, Gabrielle Earnshaw, provides a detailed account of how the book came to be written, shedding light on Nouwen’s writing process and aspects of his life experience that influenced his insights and ideas. Earnshaw examines Nouwen’s intellectual formation as well as the impact of his family and friends on the shape of the book. Letters, many published here for the first time, give us a privileged look at Henri’s world during the nine years he took to complete the book. Earnshaw considers how it compares to other books published at the same time to place the work and its author in a historical, cultural and religious/spiritual context. Finally, she explores how Nouwen himself was changed by the book and why twenty-three later it continues to touch the hearts and minds of 21st century readers.

"The return of the prodigal son was originally published in the United States by Doubleday, a division of Penguin Random House LLC, New York, in 1992"--Copyright page.

OVER TWO MILLION COPIES SOLD! It's the most powerful force in the universe, our only hope for love and forgiveness, and a foretaste of eternal life: amazing, radical, life-changing grace. Millions of lives have been changed by award-winning author Philip Yancey's startling exploration of grace at street level. Grace is the one thing the world can't duplicate, the healing force we need, and the key to transforming a broken world. In this revised and updated edition of his personal and provocative book, Yancey offers true portraits of grace's life-changing power. These stories, set in the midst of life's stark realities, evoke such questions as: If grace is God's love for the undeserving, how do I get it? How well are we dispensing grace to a world that knows far more of strife and unforgiveness than it does of mercy? Can grace make a difference in the midst of such atrocities as the Nazi holocaust, and how can it withstand the brutality of hate? With powerful stories, rich theology, and practical suggestions, Yancey challenges us to become living answers to a world that desperately needs to know, What's So Amazing About Grace?

The New York Times bestselling author of The Prodigal Prophet uncovers the essential message of Jesus, locked inside his most familiar parable. Newsweek called renowned minister Timothy Keller "a C.S. Lewis for the twenty-first century" in a feature on his first book, The Reason for God. In that book, he offered a rational explanation of why we should believe in God. Now, in The Prodigal God, Keller takes his trademark intellectual approach to understanding Christianity and uses the parable of the prodigal son to reveal an unexpected message of hope and salvation. Within that parable Jesus reveals God's prodigal grace toward both the irreligious and the moralistic. This book will challenge both the devout and skeptics to see Christianity in a whole new way.