You’ve hard the saying, “You can’t go home again!” Well, there is a well-know story of a young fellow who did go home again. It began with the young man asking for his share of his father’s estate. And when he received it, he left home and traveled to a far country and there through a series of bad decisions and a lax life-style, lost every cent he had.
Destitute and in severe want he hired himself out to a rancher and was given the most deplorable jobs, mucking out the horse stables and other menial tasks others didn’t want to do. Finally in complete desperation and totally fed-up with himself, he deiced to go back home; anything would be better than this, even to be a hired-hand and live in a bunk house on his father’s ranch.
All the way home, he rehearsed what he was going to say. As he topped the hill overlooking his old home place, to his surprise, his father rode up, jumped down off his horse and without hesitation welcomed him back home. He didn’t even allow his son opportunity to say how sorry he was or to give his well-rehearsed speech. The father just simply received him back home. He told his hands to clothe him, put a ring on his finger and a new pair of shoes on his feet. “My son was dead and he is alive again, he was lost and is found.”
Had this been a West Texas rancher, he would have said to his hired-hands, “Go get that George Straight shirt and put on him, put a diamond ring on his finger, get that 1000x Silver Belly Stetson we’ve been saving and put it on his head. And while you’re at it, bar-be-Que that prize steer and invite all the neighbors. We’re going to have one humdinger of a party, “for this son of mine was dead and as come to life again; he was lost and has been found” Luke 15:24
You of course recognize this as the parable of the Prodigal Son in Luke 15:11-31. It is the story of a young man who did go back home; a story that had a wonderful ending. It can be your story too, if you have wandered far away from home. Like the young man in the story, you too, can come back to the Father and be received back home as though you had never left in the first place.
