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You Can Come Home Any Time
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never disobeyed your command; yet you have never given me even
a young goat so that I might celebrate with my friends. But when
this son of yours came back, who has devoured your property with
prostitutes, you killed the fatted calf for him!’ Then the father said
to him, ‘Son, you are always with me, and all that is mine is yours.
But we had to celebrate and rejoice, because this brother of yours
was dead and has come to life; he was lost and has been found.’”
Luke 15:11-32
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This is the story of a young man weary of the restraints of living
at home
Things came to the point that he decided he had to get away.
His wealthy loving father gave the lad his inheritance, and he left
for a place he thought he would have freedom to do whatever he
pleased. He had the money to satisfy every desire. Because money
attracts company, he soon had a group of friends to help him spend
his wealth in high living.
But the hopes and dreams he had nurtured while a boy at home
soon sank into oblivion, along with the stability and security of his
spiritual upbringing. His inheritance squandered, he applied for a
job and was assigned to look after hogs. For a Jew, nothing could
have been worse. Jesus’ Jewish audience understood the pits of
degradation and humiliation He was describing. The young man,
determined to find liberty, instead found himself a virtual slave.
Friendless, starving, and sick at heart, he forced himself to eat hogs’
food to survive
[24]
In this narrative we see an amazing picture of the hopelessness
of a life divorced from God. It may take time for us to realize how
poverty-stricken we are when we separate ourselves from the love
of the heavenly Father, but that day will come. All the while, God is
desperately seeking to find ways to influence us to return home.
The young man ultimately came to his senses, realizing that the
servants in his father’s house were better off than he was. In his
misery, the boy remembered his father’s love. And the memories of
that love began to beckon him home.
Finally, he made the decision to head back and to confess his
waywardness. He decides he will tell his father, “I’ve sinned against
heaven and you; I’m not worthy to be called your son, but let me be
like one of your employees.” Weak from hunger in a land of famine,
