Love That Finds Us

The poem "Touched by an Angel" by Maya Angelou is a rich companion to the parable of the prodigal son.

We, unaccustomed to courage

exiles from delight

live coiled in shells of loneliness

until love leaves its high holy temple

and comes into our sight

to liberate us into life.

Love arrives

and in its train come ecstasies

old memories of pleasure

ancient histories of pain.

Yet another if we are bold,

love strikes away the chains of fear

from our souls.

We are weaned from our timidity

In the flush of love's light

we dare be brave

And suddenly we see

that love costs all we are

and will ever be.

Yet it is only love

which sets us free.

— Maya Angelou, “Touched by an Angel” from her 1978 collection And Still I Rise

Love That Finds Us

Poet Maya Angelou names what most of us know but rarely admit - we, unaccustomed to courage, are “exiles from delight…”  We move through the world guarded, managing our distances, protecting the tender places inside us. Love—real love—feels dangerous because it asks something of us. It asks us to be seen.  

The Surgeon General tells us many in our country suffer from loneliness – with guarded hearts, we “live coiled in shells of loneliness.”  But does it have to be this way? 

We see this same reality in the younger son’s journey from our lesson this weekend in Luke 15. He leaves home convinced that freedom means distance, autonomy, and self‑determination. But beneath his bravado is the same ache Angelou describes: the ache of someone “unaccustomed to courage,” someone who doesn’t yet know how to receive love without running from it.

Angelou writes that when love arrives, “It strikes away the chains of fear from our souls.” But that striking-away is not gentle. It often comes through the breaking of our false illusions, the unraveling of our self-sufficiency.

For the prodigal, the breaking open happens in a far country—hungry, alone, rehearsing a speech he hopes will earn him a place back
home. He imagines returning as a servant because he cannot yet imagine returning as a beloved child.

Angelou’s poem helps us see this moment not as failure, but as the threshold where love begins its work. Love meets us in the ruins of our own making and whispers, “There is more for you than this.”

Angelou says love “liberates.” Jesus shows us what that liberation looks like.  The father runs—he runs! toward the son who had run away. He interrupts the apology, wraps him in belonging, restores him before the son can earn a thing. This is the kind of love that frees us from fear, shame, and the stories we tell about ourselves.

It is also love that requires courage. The son must choose to rise and go home. The father must choose to open his heart again. The elder brother must choose whether he will let love soften him or keep him outside the celebration.

Love liberates us, but it also invites us into the vulnerable work of receiving and extending grace to ourselves and others.

Angelou ends with the truth that love “arrives / and in its train come ecstasies / old memories of pleasure / ancient histories of pain.”  Love does not erase our past; it transforms it. It gathers up our joy and our wounds and carries them into a new future.

The father’s embrace does not undo the son’s mistakes. It reframes them. The story is no longer one of failure, shame and exile but instead is one of hope, restoration and homecoming.

This is the gospel: Love finds us, frees us, and makes us whole.  Beloved, love is never cheap. But it is always freeing.

Reflection Questions to Ponder

A Prayer for the Journey

God of returning and God of release, touch us with your love that frees. Where we have wandered far, call us home. Where fear has chained our hearts, break us open with grace. Where shame has silenced us, speak a truer word—Beloved. Give us courage to rise, to return, to rejoice, and to join your feast of mercy that never ends. Amen.