thought exercise on Prodigal Son

In this excerpt, the French monastic leader Frere Pierre Marie, shares an interpretation of Jesus as the true prodigal son—bringing all of us home with him: He, who is born not from human stock, or ...

The law is harsh and cannot help us to receive forgiveness. In Craddock Stories, a collection of outstanding stories by Fred Craddock, is the following account with one who could understand law, but ...

In his excellent book, The Prodigal God , Timothy Keller corrects the notion that this classic parable (The Parable of the Prodigal Son, Lk. 15) is not only about the lostness of the younger ...

In his book Poet and Peasant and Through Peasant Eyes , professor and missionary Kenneth Bailey unlocked some very interesting features of the parable of the prodigal son, here focused on what it m...

Let us begin with a question. Do you really know how to enjoy the world? Do you know how to enjoy yourself? One of the greatest parables in the New Testament has to do with the search for enjoyment an...

A soul without a center is like a house built over a sinkhole. “How collapsed you are my soul , and how you sigh over me.” On the other hand, the soul comes alive when it is centered on God. “Let...

Someone once quipped that we spend the first half of our lives struggling with the sixth commandment ( Thou shalt not commit adultery ) and the second half of our lives struggling with the fifth comma...

In What’s So Amazing about Grace?, Philip Yancey offers an updated version of the parable of the prodigal son. Growing up in the countryside in Michigan, a young girl rebels against her old-fashioned...

Shepherds in Lebanon, and in the Holy Land (in addition to some of my students), have told me that once a sheep knows that it is lost, it tries to hide under a bush or rock and begins quivering and bl...

In his excellent study of the famous Biblical passage on shepherds, ( The Good Shepherd: A Thousand Year Journey from Psalm 23 to the New Testament ) , scholar Ken Bailey provides a bit of context ...

In the old American South (and in many places in the American North) a European American who invited an African American as a guest to an expensive restaurant in a white section of town would subject ...

In his excellent study of the famous Biblical passage on shepherds, ( The Good Shepherd: A Thousand Year Journey from Psalm 23 to the New Testament ) , scholar Ken Bailey provides helpful context t...

In my lifelong study of the Bible I have looked for an overarching theme, a summary statement of what the whole sprawling book is about. I have settled on this: “God gets his family back.” From the fi...

Reaching back to the tradition of virtues and vices can also give us fresh eyes and expose new layers of meaning in our reading of scripture. Before I read Aquinas on sloth, I would have associated it...

Rembrandt painted the picture of the prodigal son between 1665 and 1667, at the end of his life. As a young painter, he was popular in Amsterdam and successful with commissions to do portraits of all ...

The biblical writers and reciters make extensive use of metaphors, parables and dramatic actions. Jesus does not say, “God’s love is boundless.” Instead, he tells the story of the prodigal son. He doe...

One of my daughters has been singing a song about Jesus that contains the line “Jesus was a story-tellin’ man.” When I first heard that line it seemed a bit flip, as so many contemporary Christian son...

Kevin Blue has spent much of his ministry career serving the poor in inner-city Los Angeles. This reflection show how the investment in the poor can pay big dividends: Loving the poor has cost me so...

I heard a story about a little boy who wanted to give God an offering but had nothing to give. He sat on the floor, watching people pass by and place their offerings in large wicker baskets. How he lo...

In her book Keeping Place: Reflections on the Meaning of Home , Jen Pollock Michel reflects on the nature of home in a transient age. In this short excerpt, Michel reflects on the Biblical doctrine...

With a graciousness and an understanding of human weakness that only God can exhibit, Jesus liberates us from alienation and self-condemnation and offers each of us a new possibility. He is the Savior...

Joseph exhibited the true spirit of adoption. It is a vivid picture both of God’s adoption of us as His children in Christ, but also the call every believer has in welcoming into our homes and communi...

When I was a child, my father brought home a twelve-year-old boy named Roger, whose parents had died from a drug overdose. There was no one to care for Roger, so my folks decided they would raise him ...

For most of us, Jesus’s world is a strange, foreign country. I don’t mean just the Middle East, a major international trouble spot then as now. I mean that people in his day and in his country thought...

God does for you what Bill Tucker’s father did for him. Bill was sixteen years old when his dad suffered a health crisis and consequently had to leave his business. Even after Mr. Tucker regained his ...

One of my favorite Bible illustrations of someone willing to go against the norms of society to befriend another based on love and forgiveness is found in the New Testament book of Philemon. It is a m...

Solitude... keeps us from making judgments about other people’s sins. In this way real forgiveness becomes possible. The following desert story offers a good illustration: A brother . . . committed...

There is a story of a public sinner who was excommunicated and forbidden from entering the church, He took his woes to God. "They won't let me in, Lord, because I am a sinner." "W...

The runners for the Special Olympic, 400-meter dash were being helped to their marks. As I watched, a gentleman in a three-piece suit jumped up in the stands in front of me and began yelling, “Lenny! ...

In Israel’s tribal society redemption was the act of a patriarch who put his own resources on the line to ransom a family member who had been driven to the margins of society by poverty, who had been ...