The Prodigals

What is a prodigal? How are we prodigals? What is God’s posture towards prodigals?

A prodigal is a wasteful and wayward person, who has left God their father for sinful, extravagant, selfish, and self-serving living.

God loves the prodigal despite of their sinful, wasteful, and wayward ways.

In Luke 15, we see the parables of the lost things, the lost sheep, the lost coin, and the lost sons, expressing God’s desire to seek and to save the lost (Luke 19:10).

The loving father in the parable of the prodigals says to the older brother, “Son, you are always with me, and all that is mine is yours. It was fitting to celebrate and be glad, for this your brother was dead, and is alive; he was lost, and is found.” (Luke 15:31-32, ESV).

St. Jerome expressed that he was a prodigal, saying, “I am that prodigal son who wasted all the portion entrusted to me by my father. But I have not yet fallen at my father's knees. I have not yet begun to put away from me the enticements of my former riotous living.” Jerome saw himself as the prodigal who was needing repentance and who needed to seek God.

Like the prodigal son, when we turn towards God, our loving father runs to us and restores us to himself.

May we see that we are prodigals who need to return to God and find that we are loved and welcomed with open arms as we are restored to fellowship with him.

A Collect for the Fourth Sunday in Lent: “Gracious Father, whose blessed Son Jesus Christ came down from heaven to be the true bread which gives life to the world: Evermore give us this bread, that he may live in us, and we in him; who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.” (Book of Common Prayer, 2019).

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