By David ReayTuesday 11 Sep 2018LifeWords DevotionalsFaithReading Time: 2 minutes
Read Luke 15:11-17
11 Then he said, “There was once a man who had two sons. The younger said to his father, ‘Father, I want right now what’s coming to me.’
12-16 “So the father divided the property between them. It wasn’t long before the younger son packed his bags and left for a distant country. There, undisciplined and dissipated, he wasted everything he had. After he had gone through all his money, there was a bad famine all through that country and he began to hurt. He signed on with a citizen there who assigned him to his fields to slop the pigs. He was so hungry he would have eaten the corncobs in the pig slop, but no one would give him any.
17-20 “That brought him to his senses. He said, ‘All those farmhands working for my father sit down to three meals a day, and here I am starving to death. (THE MESSAGE)
It is one of the great and sad ironies of life that human beings try to discover their true humanity apart from the only one who can offer them true humanity. Way back in the Garden of Eden, the first humans made their futile declaration of independence. Life will be better without the shackles of God shaping our lives. Let’s live our own lives. And ever since we have suffered the consequences.
In the familiar story of the Prodigal Son, Jesus updates this declaration of independence. The younger brother wants freedom from his father. He gets independence but misses out on freedom. Without our God shaping us, we are only free inasmuch as a ship without rudder and compass is free. We are free to shipwreck, to damage ourselves and others.
Which is what this young man did. He discovered the futility of a fatherless life. Going our own way may seem attractive and enticing. But the supposed greener grass of ‘freedom’ can so easily turn into the pigsty of independence.
Blessings
David Reay