United States or São Tomé and Príncipe ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
I did not buy the candles, but she did; and while I silently thanked a Higher Power, and the ta-tas burned to her deity, she informed me that my countryman, the prodigal, had been carried to the "potters' field." Not all prodigals reach home again; some are buried by the swine-troughs.
No relatives or friends solicited the Prodigal Son to leave the swine-troughs, or dragged him away. It was God who put it into his heart to say `I will arise and go to my father. It was God who gave him `power to will and to do." "Would you then advise that we should do nothing for him, and leave him entirely in the hands of God?" asked Phil, with an uncomfortable feeling of surprise.
And there is a deeper and solemner word still in the context. Thank God, the prodigal son in his rags amongst the swine, and lying by the swine-troughs in his filth and his husks, and his fever, is a son! No doubt about that!
II. The wastrel's returning sanity is described in verses 17-20a. 'He came to himself. Then he had been beside himself before. It is insanity to try to shake off God, to aim at independence, to wander from Him, to fling away our 'substance, that is, our true selves, and to starve among the swine-troughs.
We cannot cleanse ourselves, we cannot 'put off' this old nature which has struck its roots so deep into our being; but if we turn to Him with faith and say Forgive me, and cleanse, and strip from me the foul and ragged robe fit only for the swine-troughs in the far-off land of disobedience, He will receive us and answer all our desires, and cast around us the pure garment of His own righteousness.
Word Of The Day