Daily Devotion, September 14, 2022

 

Devotion:

Read Ephesians 2:4-7.

This Sunday’s parable is the familiar story of “The Prodigal Son” from Luke 15. I was surprised when I looked up the definition of “prodigal”! Throughout my life, I thought “prodigal” was about the “journey” which takes one away from home! But its original meaning is “spending money or resources freely and recklessly; wastefully extravagant.” It can be both a positive and negative adjective! And it’s a word which didn’t come into being until the 1500’s!

So, with new eyes, I read the story which we know as “The Prodigal Son”. It wasn’t so much his “journey” which caused him to be “prodigal”, but it is what he did with all the riches his father had freely and generously given to him. He spent it all for all the wrong reasons!

With this new understanding, I realized the older brother had also misunderstood the generous ways of his father. The father responded to the older brother’s jealousy, “…everything that is mine is yours.” 

In today’s scripture, Paul is describing the Heavenly Father’s gracious love and generosity similarly to the gracious generosity of the father of the two sons in the parable.

Twice the father’s words in the parable declared, “…he was dead and now he is alive again, he was lost and has been found.” And Paul uses a similar phrase here in Ephesians, “…even when we were dead through our trespasses, God made us alive together with Christ.”

In the Message, Ephesians 2:2 says, “You let the world, which doesn’t know the first thing about living, tell you how to live.”

In Ephesians 2:4, Paul turns it all around! “But God, who is rich in mercy…” It’s all God’s gift to us! God’s mercy and love through Christ saves us for new life, to live according to the ways of Christ!

The two sons in the parable both had different perspectives on their father. The younger son knew the forgiving nature of his father, but the older son missed it by measuring his own efforts to earn his father’s love. But the father’s love was there from the beginning.

Personal Worship Option:

Paul had experienced the loving and forgiving nature of God and writes clearly, that the immeasurable riches of God’s grace offers new life to be lived in the ways of Christ. The deeper question is “What are we doing with God’s ‘immeasurable riches of grace and kindness toward us in Christ Jesus?’”