My Adventure: A Story of Perseverance & Truth

When you were a child, were you ever pleasantly surprised at the loving response of your parent or guardian after you’d done something that you knew for which you deserved to be disciplined? In Luke 15:11-32, we find the parable of the son that abused the grace of his wealthy father and was met with a similar compassionate response. We don’t know his or his family’s name, but we know there were two sons from a family of wealth. The youngest asks his father for his share of the property coming to him. Although his request was somewhat presumptuous, the father gives him his cut. Not long after, the son sets off to make his way in a far off country. As one would expect from a young man with too much too soon, the son runs through all of his inheritance on wild living. He had hit rock bottom and found himself longing for the food that the pigs were eating. He came to his senses and recalled that his father, being a man of wealth, had servants that were living better than he was living,...

Tomorrow, we will observe “Independence Day”. A day to commemorate the “Declaration of Independence” of the then thirteen American colonies separating themselves from the rule of the British monarchy.  In June, we celebrated “Juneteenth”, which marks the ending of slavery through the “Emancipation Proclamation” in 1865. What is significant about this celebration of freedom is that it was about 2.5 years after the Emancipation Proclamation went into effect in 1863! Let us think about that for a minute. The Civil War had ended and the slaves were then free from over 400 years of excessive hard labor, being whipped and tortured, being branded, being sold and separated from their families, and being held as property, but some did not know it until 2.5 years later. As I thought about the horrors of slavery and the tentative freedoms of ex-slaves, I thought about how that often mirrors our spiritual emancipation and freedom. How many of us are still living as slaves to sin, although Je...