Go Home!

“How many of my father’s hired workers have more than enough food to eat, but here am I, dying from hunger.” Luke 15:17

This verse reminds me of the time my brother went off to Canada to immigrate. He was doing graphic design for a company and telling the other employees there that back home he had help to cook food, wash his clothes, clean up after him, even drive him places. While he was in Vancouver, he had to do all that for himself, and live alone in a small apartment without his family around him. He was homesick. His office mates thought he was crazy. “What are you doing here? Go home!” they said. And he eventually did. 

The prodigal son thought the same, “What am I doing here? I should go home where I can eat!” He had selfishly squandered all his inheritance and he was not expecting a good welcome, but at least his father would not have allowed him to starve. What he did not expect was his father was longing for his wayward son to come home. Instead of treating him with resentment, his father hugged him tight, and prepared a feast to welcome him back! 

The father was extremely generous and lavish with his forgiveness and love. We can look forward to a welcome like that from our Heavenly Father when we turn back to him in humility and repentance. 

I cannot help feeling that this Covid-19 scare is really a call for all of us to examine our lives, take stock of how we have used the gifts we are given, and how we love our neighbors. It is also a time to repent of our personal and corporate sins as a nation. I sense that far from angry, like the prodigal Father, God is waiting for His people to come to our senses and see the truth. We put too much value in worldly things. We are like the younger son who wants everything the world can offer, when what we have with our Father is so much more precious. Let us run back to Him. He is waiting. Let us spend more time in prayer and reading His Word. That is an inheritance that is worth more than anything in this world!