One of the most familiar stories in the Bible is the parable told by Jesus of the lost son. It is most often called the parable of the Prodigal Son. A man had two sons. The younger of the two wanted his inheritance upon demand. So, the father did what it took to give him that money not upon his own death, when one would normally receive and inheritance, but immediately. And then the son took that money and squandered it. The Bible says that he spent it on “reckless living.” Basically, he took it and had a good time with it. He went to Las Vegas and gambled it away, spent it on alcohol and lavish meals, and enjoyed whatever pleasure that he could afford.
At some point, he ran out of money. He spent everything that his father gave him. And then on top of that, a famine hit the land. For an agrarian culture, a famine was devastating. This would be like a stock market crash leading to a depression. Inflation skyrockets and unemployment goes through the roof. There are no jobs. He had no money and the only thing that he could find to do to earn some money was to feed pigs. Now, for a Jew to have to work for a Gentile (a Jew wouldn’t own pigs) was bad enough, but to have to, himself, feed pigs was demeaning and degrading and dishonorable. It really can’t get any worse. But then it does.
He’s hungry. He has no food. He has no friends. It is amazing how fast people leave you when you no longer have any money. What relationships he had were based on his ability to buy wine, women, and song, and now that was gone, and so were his friends. The Bible puts it like this. “No one gave him anything.” You know that your financial situation is dire when you’re actually hungry. The man didn’t have enough food to get him from day to day. He can’t even afford to buy the food that the pigs were eating. He must have had a pretty cruel boss, if he wasn’t even allowed to eat the food that the pigs ate. And he is away from family. He had no one to help him.
But the next sentence gives us the turning point in the story. The Bible says that “he came to himself.” Notice how long he let himself go before he came to his senses. I think if I had spent all my money, even in embarrassing ways, I think I would have gone home long before I was so low that I couldn’t even afford pig food, even if I had to face the disapproval of my father when I got there. But not this guy. He knows that his father’s minimum-wage day-laborers have plenty of food. And what is he doing? He is starving, sitting with pigs and watching them eat food that he can’t even afford to eat!
Folks, it is only when life ceases to work that we will come home to our Father. As long as he had some possible way to make it, he was going to continue in his stubborn rebellion. Working for a Gentile was bad, feeding that Gentile’s pigs was worse, but being hungry and not even being able to afford the food that he was feeding the pigs was the worst. He was as low as he could go. What that tells me is this. Sometimes the most loving thing that God can do for us is to cause life to cease working. As long as life works, then I don’t need God. As long as I think I have some semblance of self-sufficiency and dignity, then I’m staying with the pigs. As long as I think I can do it myself and pull this thing out, then I’m not going home. You can forget that.
God has no problem taking away our away our dignity. He has no problem taking away our resources. He has no problem taking away our friends and our family. (“No one gave him anything.”) He doesn’t even have a problem taking away what we think are basic necessities, like food. Why? It is because he knows that he has everything that we need. And he also knows that to have any of these things, but not have him is worse than even hunger itself. Jesus would put it like this. “What does it profit a man if gains the whole world, but loses his soul.”
When your life ceases to work, maybe there’s a reason. When situations in your life come to dead-ends, maybe God is trying to tell you something. When you lose your job, when a significant relationship comes to an end, when you fail at something at which you thought you were successful, maybe God is trying to get you to come to your yourself, and come home to him.