Week 1 November 2025, Devotion Part 1

Now his elder son was in the field; and as he came and drew near to the house, he heard music and dancing. And he called one of the servants and asked what this meant.  Luke 15:25

We could tell him! It meant he was so emotionally distant from his father as if the field he toiled in that day had been the geographically “far country” of the younger son’s wasteful living. It meant he was a deliberate miser, proud of his measly joys and starved relationships. He thrived on acting the duty-bound sour son, although the father had given him his financial freedom at the same time his spendthrift brother asked for his (verse 12). The tragedy of his desertion had left him unmoved. The travesty of his own wasteful self-absorption never entered his head. His lost heart found merrymaking irksome. Pity the poor servant who must answer to such a pronounced crank.

The music and dancing that grated on the elder son’s ears were in celebration of the good news announced to the guests by the father, “My son was dead, and is alive again; he was lost, and he is found.” This is gospel talk, pure and simple. If there is no “merrymaking” in the church, the sour sons of our sweet Father may be running the show. What if they are ruining it for some of our children, whose idea of a field day differs from that of the passionless plowman with the perpetually furrowed brow?        Part 1 of 2

Comment: Leave it to Dr. Luke to spin the story away from the direction of the kitchen where the Butterball turkey is roasting.  Who knows how that fatted calf was being cooked, but no doubt the whole house was beginning to smell heavenly. When we’re just hours away from an amazing feast and family reunion, we don’t let hellish flight delays or clogged freeways rob us of our anticipatory joy.  Our friends don’t mind the wait, easily pacified with snacks and TV.  The guests arriving at the Prodigal’s home surely were in good spirits without some poured into a glass.  They welcomed the chance to mingle with others and share their own family news.  That is, until a strange  silence took center stage.  Where is the firstborn, they wondered, and shot quizzical glances at their clearly “absentminded” host.

In truth, the parable’s father was lost in a world of his own.  Luke embodied him in the Creator of the cosmos of John 3:16, where lost sheep still are crying from distress and former party animals have lost their taste for carousing.  Manmade religion likes to rub in the idiom: “You’ve made your bed, now lie in it.”  Our Savior God put Redemption at the apex of His agenda. It radiates an otherworldly love so deep and ardent that only a Roman cross could drive it home to hurting hearts – and deep into sad homes where estranged loved ones have lost hope.  Worldly hype offers only Band-Aids for festering distress. The Gospel, Dr. Luke counsels, is the miracle cure if we swallow our pride and confess that “I, a wretch just like John Newton, once was lost, but now am found.”