In the parable of the prodigal son (Luke 15:11-32), there are two sons: the younger son, who runs away from home to an alien country, and the older son, who stays home to do his duty. The younger son dissipates himself with alcohol and sex; the older son alienates himself by working hard and dutifully fulfilling all his obligations. Both are lost. Their father grieves over both, because with neither of them does he experience the intimacy he desires.
Both lust and cold obedience can prevent us from being true children of God. Whether we are like the younger son or the older son, we have to come home to the place where we can rest in the embrace of God’s unconditional love.
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June 30, 2007 at 2:11 pm
hockamama
I think there’s a certain amount of martyrdom there. kind of like when your mama does something, then makes sure everyone knows what an effort it took to get it done. oh, sorry, is that just my mama?
June 30, 2007 at 5:31 pm
helenl
Hi Holly, I’m not sure I know what you mean.
July 1, 2007 at 8:26 am
Tomas
I think that the coming home is the living at home – It is the smile of faith that we receive as the precious gift.. If we are only coming than we don’t live by faith and look at our own works as at some ladder to the heaven. That’s nice looking self deception. Our Lord Jesus Christ is one and only way.
Our coming is our Hi to the strangers – that’s our love – joy to give all we have the best without questioning what we will get in result. In case we have accepted Jesus as our savior and live with Him, we are at home and recognize Jesus in everyone we meet with. Jesus has died for him as well as for me for we all could enter the heaven. Are we with Jesus, or still in the world?
These economies differ greatly. While World rejoice at the getting more, the Heaven enjoy healing the sick. We are to choose. Though checking the pursue looks like wise act, but it reveals not our wisdom, but the lack of faith – our worries show our being not at home where we are lacking nothing.
I am not going to boast in my disability or wisdom to deal with the problems I face on a daily basis. The reality is not very bright – it looks hopeless in fact, but God loves us such as we are and the miraculous transformations took place. I face lots of problems and haven’t a penny (in a literal sense of a word) but I stay in gratitude and I am not starving or lacking something in a literal sense of a word too. It’s otherwise, the expositions of my pictures travel around. I am going to open one on Wednesday. I will have the opportunity to thank God for all he did- for He is and makes the strangers the fellows. That’s the living in home, and that’s the test : I can either thank or to reason what was done by me.
It is very easy to stumble there and start boasting in own biography.
Coming home is the repentance – the comprehension of the ugliness of worry for the self: it is denying the omnipresence of the omnipotent God who love us and who will take us to Himself. It will be God’s glorious act, the precious gift through Jesus Christ, but not the result of some our own coming