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I looked over the highway, directly across at the place opposite from where I stood. I still had to walk all the way round to the bridge, and then cross the bridge, to get to that spot. And only then would I be in the right neighbourhood, and my journey could continue. I asked myself at that instant, ‘If there’s one place you could be, where would that be?’ The immediate answer was, ‘Right there! Just across the bridge. I’d skip walking round to the bridge, and then crossing the bridge, and I’d be right at that spot over there.’ But just a second, I said to myself. That’s not really where I want to go. My final destination is the shop over in the neighbourhood, not that spot across the bridge! In fact, if I could really choose to ’skip’ out any part of my journey, I’d skip it all, and be back home with all my shopping in one second’s time!

So, I began to think. Why was I so quick to settle for the intermediate spot, when after some deeper thinking and prioritizing I could clearly see that it was just a stepping stone? This reminded me of a story.

A king once had a son who misbehaved, acting in a way that was very inappropriate for a prince. The king heavy-heartedly exiled his wayward son, sending him away to live in a small village far away from the capital and the palace.

The prince suddenly found himself in a largely foreign environment. All of the luxuries that had been so integral a part of his life were nowhere to be found, and he needed to learn the basic, unrefined ways of the peasants who surrounded him in order to survive. He became a shepherd, learning through painstaking trial and error how to live the life of someone he’d never even thought of. He was truly an exile, and the adaptation was very difficult for him…

Years later, the king made a royal procession through the provinces of his kingdom, offering his rural subjects the special opportunity to see their king up-close and in their own villages. Moreover, the king upheld a unique custom, where villagers could write notes to the king making personal requests; the king would make an effort to fulfill every request he read.

The king’s caravan entered the village where, according to the king’s intelligence, his exiled son lived. The king read all of the notes this time. He came to a note whose handwriting was painfully familiar; it had been written by his son! What did his son want, what did he request? Did he want to come back home to the palace, to be reunited with his father? To the king’s bitter disappointment, the message read, in the refined writing of the prince, ‘I am a shepherd, but I have never succeeded in building a hut like those that the other shepherds build to shelter themselves from the boiling sun, the freezing frost, and the pouring rain. If it please Your Majesty, would he build for me a hut to shade myself from the elements in my shepherding?’

The king read the note, and he wept. ‘If only my son would ask me to return him back to the palace, I would do it right now! But how lowly he has fallen; he has forgotten who he is, and only asks me for a simple shepherd’s hut!’

We, Am Yisrael, are the exiled prince, living the life of the simple shepherd. Sometimes, we forget who we are, and what nobility we are. We are princes and princesses, exiled from G-d’s cherished palace. Sometimes we forget to ask Him to bring us back to Him, to end the long exile; instead, we ask him for shepherds’ huts, silly things, short-sighted things. And maybe He’s waiting for us to open our hearts, open our mouths and ask Him, Father, bring us home! Bring us back! Maybe that’s all He’s waiting for, to bring us back to the palace, to bring us home…

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Picture from here