“Lost, and is Found”
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The young man turns from the swine herds and the husks, and
sets his face toward home. Trembling with weakness and faint from
hunger, he presses eagerly on his way. He has no covering to conceal
his rags; but his misery has conquered pride, and he hurries on to beg
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a servant’s place where he was once a child.
Little did the gay, thoughtless youth, as he went out from his
father’s gate, dream of the ache and longing left in that father’s heart.
When he danced and feasted with his wild companions, little did he
think of the shadow that had fallen on his home. And now as with
weary and painful steps he pursues the homeward way, he knows not
that one is watching for his return. But while he is yet “a great way
off” the father discerns his form. Love is of quick sight. Not even the
degradation of the years of sin can conceal the son from the father’s
eyes. He “had compassion, and ran, and fell on his neck” in a long,
clinging, tender embrace.
The father will permit no contemptuous eye to mock at his son’s
misery and tatters. He takes from his own shoulders the broad, rich
mantle, and wraps it around the son’s wasted form, and the youth sobs
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out his repentance, saying, “Father, I have sinned against heaven, and
in thy sight, and am no more worthy to be called thy son.” The father
holds him close to his side, and brings him home. No opportunity is
given him to ask a servant’s place. He is a son, who shall be honored
with the best the house affords, and whom the waiting men and women
shall respect and serve.
The father said to his servants, “Bring forth the best robe, and put
it on him; and put a ring on his hand, and shoes on his feet; and bring
hither the fatted calf, and kill it; and let us eat and be merry; for this
my son was dead, and is alive again; he was lost, and is found. And
they began to be merry.”
In his restless youth the prodigal looked upon his father as stern
and severe. How different his conception of him now! So those who
are deceived by Satan look upon God as hard and exacting. They
regard Him as watching to denounce and condemn, as unwilling to
receive the sinner so long as there is a legal excuse for not helping
him. His law they regard as a restriction upon men’s happiness, a
burdensome yoke from which they are glad to escape. But he whose
eyes have been opened by the love of Christ will behold God as full
of compassion. He does not appear as a tyrannical, relentless being,