The Parable of the Lost Son

I've been very blessed that Michael and I have started a new way of doing a daily devotional together.  We've tried many different ways like reading a devotional book, or reading out loud together.  These things last for a week or a few days but then usually fall to the wayside as life gets in the way.  But now we found a way to do some Bible studying together that really works for us and we have kept it going every single day since January 1st.  What we do is we pick a book of the Bible and each day on our own we read a chapter of the current book we are on.  We right down our thoughts and questions in a notebook and each night we come together with what we have read and discuss it.  Some nights it leads to long discussions and other nights are simply an over view of what we read that night.

We are currently going through Luke with a plan to follow it up with Acts.  About a week ago we read through chapter 15 which contains The Parable of the Lost Sheep, the Parable of the Lost Coin and the Parable of the Lost Son.  Now I've read through these many times and have always gotten the gist of what they were about but never really dove deeply into these parables before.  All three parables have the same principle to it, when the lost are returned to God there is a celebration in heaven when people return to God.  This is a wonderful thing and it hit me that God celebrated me.  What a concept?!  God celebrated me!  This thought brings me such incredible joy.  God has so many people that love him, but when I can to him he celebrated my coming into his family.

But I always had a problem with the parable of the Lost Son.  If you need a refresher here it is.  This Parable is found in Luke 15: 11-32

¹¹ Jesus continued: “There was a man who had two sons. ¹² The younger one said to his father, ‘Father, give me my share of the estate.’ So he divided his property between them.

   ¹³ “Not long after that, the younger son got together all he had, set off for a distant country and there squandered his wealth in wild living. ¹⁴ After he had spent everything, there was a severe famine in that whole country, and he began to be in need. ¹⁵ So he went and hired himself out to a citizen of that country, who sent him to his fields to feed pigs. ¹⁶ He longed to fill his stomach with the pods that the pigs were eating, but no one gave him anything.

   ¹⁷ “When he came to his senses, he said, ‘How many of my father’s hired servants have food to spare, and here I am starving to death! ¹⁸ I will set out and go back to my father and say to him: Father, I have sinned against heaven and against you. ¹⁹ I am no longer worthy to be called your son; make me like one of your hired servants.’ ²⁰ So he got up and went to his father.

   “But while he was still a long way off, his father saw him and was filled with compassion for him; he ran to his son, threw his arms around him and kissed him.

   ²¹ “The son said to him, ‘Father, I have sinned against heaven and against you. I am no longer worthy to be called your son.’

   ²² “But the father said to his servants, ‘Quick! Bring the best robe and put it on him. Put a ring on his finger and sandals on his feet. ²³ Bring the fattened calf and kill it. Let’s have a feast and celebrate. ²⁴ For this son of mine was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is found.’ So they began to celebrate.

   ²⁵ “Meanwhile, the older son was in the field. When he came near the house, he heard music and dancing. ²⁶ So he called one of the servants and asked him what was going on. ²⁷ ‘Your brother has come,’ he replied, ‘and your father has killed the fattened calf because he has him back safe and sound.’

   ²⁸ “The older brother became angry and refused to go in. So his father went out and pleaded with him. ²⁹ But he answered his father, ‘Look! All these years I’ve been slaving for you and never disobeyed your orders. Yet you never gave me even a young goat so I could celebrate with my friends.³⁰ But when this son of yours who has squandered your property with prostitutes comes home, you kill the fattened calf for him!’

   ³¹ “‘My son,’ the father said, ‘you are always with me, and everything I have is yours. ³² But we had to celebrate and be glad, because this brother of yours was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is found.’”

Now, in the past when I have read through this I have identified not with the lost son, but instead with the older son.  My thought was, why are you celebrating this stupid kid who ran off, took your stuff and did awful things and not the son who stayed with you, took care of your things and loved you?  This bitterness affected the way I viewed my life as well.  There were times that I would think to myself, how can they love God, call themselves a Christian with how they behave?  I was judging where I had no right, but this is not what we are talking about now.

This last time that I read it through, after the son returns and the father holds a celebration for him and the older son questions the father saying "I've done everything you've ever asked of me but you never gave me the things you are giving him who wasted your resources and ran off!  Why?"  But the fathers response is what really hit me, "'My son,' the father said, 'you are always with me, and everything I have is yours.'"  His celebration of the lost son has nothing to do with his love for the other.  He always belonged to the father, he had his love, care and protection.  The father does not love him less because of his celebration of the other, he is just showing his happiness of the return of the lost, because he could not reach him before.

When we have family members that we have not seen or heard of in a long time to we not become excited to see them and celebrate?  Some celebrate with hugs and kisses and tears and others celebrate this with parties and big family get togethers.  But those who are always around, the big celebration isn't needed because they were always there.  They receive a daily celebration of love because they are present to get it.  I get the love from God because I am daily blessed to be in his presence.  I get to have his love, grace and mercy each and every single day.  There are many out there who do not have this covering because they choose to remain lost, but when they come to God they will receive the celebration to say "welcome to the family" and get the love they have been missing out on because they just wouldn't come home.

Ecclesiastes

I would have to say that Ecclesiastes is whinier than Job.  How is this possible when you remember all that Job had gone through, but Solomon really takes the cake.

Everything is meaningless!  That is his cry through the entire book.  The world is in a constant cycle of the same thing over and over.  Nothing is new, our problems are still the same problems that we have had since the very beginning of sin.

Solomon had everything, riches and wisdom.  He followed his worldly desires and was not happy.  He was only content in the years that he followed God.

Ecclesiastes 11:9-10 states:

Be happy, young man, while you are young,

and let your heart give you joy in the days of your youth.

Follow the ways of your heart and what ever your eyes see,

but know that for all these things

God will bring judgement.

So then, banish anxiety from your heart

and cast off troubles of your body,

for youth and vigor are meaningless.

God wants us to be happy, but if we let ourselves go crazy in the ways of the world we have to face the judgement and consequences that come with the territory.  We must remember God and he will take care of our worries and troubles.  We must serve him and be with him our whole lives.  Maybe if we do that we can that it will be meaningful.

Proverbs

Oh, Proverbs.  One of the more enjoyable books of the Bible in my opinion.  To me, they are like little fortune cookies of wisdom.  They are straight forward, tell it to your face snippets of awesomeness.  (I probably use all forms of awesome too much, but hey, it's what I do.)  So, I'm just going to go through a couple of the proverbs that have caught my attention through my reading this time and comment on them a bit.

"Listen, my son, to your father's

instruction

and do not forsake your

mother's teaching.

They will be a garland to grace

your head

and a chain to adorn your

neck."

     -Proverbs 1:8-9

Ok, so your parents aren't completely stupid like you thought.  They can be a great resource to you because they have been right where you are now.  They were young once, have grown and do know what they're talking about.  Their knowledge can help you make better decisions as you go through life.

"For a lack of guidance a nations falls,

but many advisers make victory sure"

-Proverbs 11:14

I am not political by any means, but this caught my attention because it seems like we as a nation are failing.  We do not have wise people leading our way and those who are in charge can not seem to work together for the good of us because we are looking in the wrong places.

"Whoever loves discipline loves knowledge,

but he who hates correction is stupid"

-Proverbs 12:1

I probably only likes this one because I love it when the Bible calls people stupid, because we are stupid.  In my experience to grow and know more you have to be disciplined in your learning and when correction is needed embrace it because it makes you better in the end.

"Gray hair is a crown of splendor,

it is attained by a righteous life"

-Proverbs 16:31

This one made me think of Michael and all that gray hair that he has.  He must have been noticed as righteous early in life since he was already starting to gray when I met him when he was fifteen years old.

Proverbs is an great book to look into.  It keeps everything simple and easy to follow and I think is also a good starting off point if new to Bible reading because it's not super intimidating when you begin.

Book Review: Bossypants

Last night I finished reading Bossypants by Tina Fey.  While over all the book was an easy read with some parts that made me smile and even laugh out loud at times I really felt it was lacking in some ways.

I honestly think Tina should be proud of herself and her accomplishments.  I find her funny when I watch her on TV and I loved when she was on SNL Weekend Update.  I just felt like most of the book she was downplaying herself and her talent.  I mean it's ok that she finds others that she worked with very talented but the whole time it seemed like she took the "I'm really not the great" approach to this memoir and then would go on to describe some of the great things she did do.  I'm all for being humble but there is also a place to be proud of yourself or your humility seems fake.

I did enjoy the couple of stories about herself when she was younger and how she looked up to her dad and how awesome he really is.  And that she is very happy to have her daughter and have a family.  I think family is very important and I it seems she feels that way to.

My favorite chapter in the book is the one where she writes a prayer for her daughter.  While I know that much of the prayer was included to be humorous I believe that in some of it she was serious in her wishes for her daughters future.

If Tina Fey ever writes another book I will more than likely give it a read.

Rolled Page Letter Bookends

Way back in October I made a rolled page letter A (which you can see here) with the intention of hanging it in my front doorway to add some character to an empty wall area.  But, the letter was too small to really make the space look nice, so I had another idea.  I went ahead and made a Z to go with my A and will be adding a wood block to the back to keep them stable and created my own unique bookends.

This make me very excited because I have been searching for bookends to help display our collection of foreign language Bibles.  I wanted something that looked nice and never really found anything I liked and I really wanted to get them out of the bookshelf and out in the open.

Our collection includes:

•  Polish prayer book
•  Hebrew NT
•  2 Indian Bibles but two different languages
• Thiruviviliam
• Hindi 
• French Bible
• Spanish Bible
• Korean Bible
• Japanese Bible
• Bulgarian Bible

We've been blessed by friends and family that while they have traveled have known about our collection and have brought us back Bibles from the countries they visited.  A couple of the Bibles we found in used book stores and the Japanese Bible was a Christmas present to Michael from my parents (it took them a couple of months to track one down).  I get excited anytime we receive or find a new one to add and hope to add more to the rest very soon.

Book Review: The Son of Neptune

I have to say that I did enjoy reading the Percy Jackson and the Olympians series, but I am digging this second series even more.  The Heroes of Olympus way more exciting and more of a page turner.  I just finished reading The Son of Neptune and I was happy to see the return of Percy Jackson, since he was mentioned but missing in the first installment.  He is a great character in my opinion.  He is loyal and brave- thing you want in a hero.

It's been awesome getting to know some of the gods in their Roman form.  It did take me a while to get used to them this way and using them with their Roman names instead of Greek; since I'm more familiar with the Greek gods.  I even ran a across a couple of gods that I had never heard of before.

I also have a copy of the first book in this series on audiobook and plan on listening to it with kids like I did with the Percy Jackson series.  Sidda and MJ loved hearing about Percy Jackson's adventures and I am excited to add more for them to experience.

Book Review: Crossed

Crossed by Ally Condie is the second book in the Matched Trilogy.  In the first installment you follow Cassia who is being Matched.  Her match is her best friend Xander who she has known all her life.  But life quickly changed for Cassia when Society tells her she is also matched to Ky.  The first book is an interesting concept.  I'm not a huge fan of distopian stories but the first one held my interest enough to continue on to the sequel.

So, Crossed is what happens after Cassia chooses to love Ky and he is sent away from Society and her journey to find him and the Rising.  Though she loves Ky she still has a strong pull to Xander.  I've read many reviews that said that they felt like the story never truly progressed but I couldn't disagree more.  I thought this book had so much more going on in it than the previous one.  I love stories that give good background and help explain why people are the way that they are.  I feel like I now understand more of the story.  I also liked that I was able to hear much of the story from Ky's perspective.  He is no longer such a mystery.

I am now looking forward to the final book coming out later this year to see how this ends and what will happen to Society.