He had counted the money. He hadn't counted the end of it.
📖Based on Luke 15:13
He asked his father for his share of the estate.
While his father was still alive.
His father divided his living between them.
Not many days later, the younger son gathered everything he had.
He traveled to a far country.
There he squandered his property in reckless living.
When he had spent everything, a severe famine arose in that country.
He began to be in need.
He went and hired himself out to one of the citizens of that country.
He sent him into his fields to feed pigs.
He was longing to be fed with the pods the pigs were eating.
No one gave him anything.
When he came to himself, he said: How many of my father's hired servants have more than enough bread?
But I perish here with hunger.
I will arise and go to my father.
I will say to him: Father, I have sinned against heaven and before you.
I am no longer worthy to be called your son.
Treat me as one of your hired servants.
He arose and came to his father.
The father saw him while he was still a great way off.
He ran.
He fell on his neck.
He kissed him.
The son began his prepared speech.
The father was already calling for the robe and the ring and sandals and the fatted calf.
But the road that led back also leads somewhere else in the story.
The elder brother standing outside.
Refusing to go in.
The party audible from where he stood.
His father coming out to plead with him.
And the elder son's accounting of years of service without a single young goat for celebration.
Two sons.
Both lost in different directions.
One in the far country.
One just outside the door.
The father's love found both of them in the place where they were standing.
Scripture — Luke 15:13
"And not many days after the younger son gathered all together, and took his journey into a far country, and there wasted his substance with riotous living."
Reflection
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He came to himself in a pig pen. The journey back started in the moment he remembered who he was and who his father was.
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The elder son was furious at the welcome. He had never left. But his heart had been somewhere equally far.