could have invested his inheritance and reaped a profit. He could have sought
counsel from his rich father and/or his father’s friends, and they could have guided
him into creating wealth and a good life of his own with the inheritance he
received. His father would have been proud of him, and would have seen his
investment as an extension of the family wealth. The son would have continued to
access his father’s home and maybe even more resources when necessary. Because
once a son, always a son. He could also have been of great use in helping run his
father’s estate from the experience he gained in his own business affairs.
Unfortunately this was not the case. The young man, probably owing to his age
and life of privilege, showed a total lack of skill and maturity in handling wealth
for the first time on his own. He moved out of home and went far away to a ‘distant
country’. ‘And there squandered his wealth in ‘wild living’. Loosely translated, he
lived large and engaged in a life of partying, drinking, promiscuity, and all kinds
of indecent acts. Simply put, he was far away from home, from his father, and was
practicing pretty much everything his parents had probably taught and warned
him against. The story having been told by Jesus, we have to assume the prodigal
had been brought up in the ways of the God of Israel. Now he was doing
everything quite the opposite.
This is a perfect example of a son, a child, who then decides to disconnect from the
father and the family, and engage in loose living. This is a perfect example of how
we can move from being children and sons of God, to being estranged and
worldly.
The story could refer to step one or step two of the process of being God’s
Children. See when God created all of us, we were His. None of us was created by
the devil. Everyone and everything was created by God. Thus the Bible says in
Psalm 24:1, ‘The earth is the Lord’s, and everything in it, the world, and all who live in
it’. How else do we interpret that except that we are all children and people of God
when we first come into this world?
However, as we grow older and begin to exert our independence, we choose to
either stay home and proceed to accept the Lordship of God in our lives, or we go
our independent way and reject God’s authority over us. If we stay home, then
our relationship with God our Father is strengthened and grows to a familial