The Journey of the ProdigalShembull

 First Attempt

Luke 15:15 - “So he went and hired himself out to a citizen of that country, who sent him to his fields to feed pigs.”

What strikes me as bizarrely interesting is that this prodigal’s need didn’t take him home. Bless our hearts, in our addiction state, addicts are highly independent and resourceful. Many of us make what I call “first attempts” to stop our addiction, or the impact from our addiction.

This young man went to the culture he was in to help him. He got a job. That might have helped a little bit to solve the eating problem, but not his heart problem.

Many addicts turn to their secular culture to help them with their addictions. Treating addictions is a mega business. Countless inpatient facilities and organizations attempt addiction treatment. Most of them are run by good people, and they do the best they know. Similarly, the man who hired the prodigal son was probably a good man, doing a good deed by helping a homeless person.

Since addicts so immerse themselves in secular ideas and people, this first attempt is honorable but incomplete. Good will not get us the freedom from addiction that Jesus Christ’s death and resurrection can. Good won’t give us the Holy Spirit to indwell us and help shape us into God’s image. Good won’t give us eternal life with the Father or an awareness of our divine purpose in time. These show up when we come home.

Sometimes as parents we think we need to be the solution for our child’s prodigal heart. We get weary in praying and trying to convince the young person to do what’s right.

Here however we see the first person moving heaven and earth for this boy’s soul was not the father sending a check or a mother sending soup. Rather the first mover in this story is God Almighty. God loves our children more than we do and he can do really big things to start the process.

God created a famine when the boy was at the end of his financial resources. Since he didn’t make the money he inherited, he did not know how to make more. I’m writing this in the middle of the COVID pandemic. There are many stories of prodigals that lost their jobs, places to live, and became “in NEED’. This change in circumstances causing discomfort or pain was what the prodigals needed to come back home and start his life afresh.