This morning for a wee change I attended Bray Park
Community Church (which was, and perhaps still is), part of the Christian
Reformed Church here in Australia. During the singing there were some members
of the congregation inviting us to smell their underarm deodorant! Fine! I can’t
complain as I have been known to wave my hands around whenever I speak! So, if you wish to wave or hold your hands in the air while you sing, then be my guest! Anyway,
that is not what I wanted to talk to you about.
I was impressed by the power-point slides which not
only had the words to the hymns flash up on the overhead-projector screen but as a
background it actually had the rising (or was it setting?) sun with moving waves
rolling onto the sandy seashore. O the wonders of modern technology! Great
stuff! But again, that’s not what I wanted to talk to you about.
The preacher wanted to allude to something in the The
Parable of the Prodigal Son (Luke 15:25-32). So he flashed up on the screen
certain verses from that parable. (I think he used the NIV but I’ve used the
NKJV below):
“Now
his older son was in the field. And as he came and drew near to the house, he
heard music and dancing. So he called one of the servants and asked what these things
meant. And he said to him, ‘Your brother has come, and because he has
received him safe and sound, your father has killed the fatted calf.’
“But he was angry and would not go in.
Therefore his father came out and pleaded with him.
So he answered
and said to his father, ‘Lo, these many years I have been serving you; I
never transgressed your commandment at any time; and yet you never gave me a
young goat, that I might make merry with my friends.
But as soon
as this son of yours came, who has devoured your livelihood with harlots, you
killed the fatted calf for him.’ “And he said to him, ‘Son, you are always with
me, and all that I have is yours.
It was right that we should make merry
and be glad, for your brother was dead and is alive again, and was lost and is
found.’” Luke 15:25-32.
The preacher was talking about something else
entirely but something struck me – you know, the way it sometimes does at
church when the Holy Spirit shoots an arrow of truth into your heart! Now, I
know that you all know this and have seen it every time you read or hear this
parable. However, it was those words at the end of verse thirty: “You have
killed the fatted calf for him.” O, the father in the parable killed the fatted
calf so that he and his deadbeat prodigal son could celebrate his change of mind,
(a.k.a. repentance) – the son who devoured his father’s livelihood with
harlots.
O let’s make merry and be glad. I once was dead but
I am alive again, “I once was lost, but now am found, was blind, but now I see!”
You too?
You too?
No comments:
Post a Comment