Luke 15:29-32

But he answered his father, 'Look! All these years I've been slaving for you and never disobeyed your orders. Yet you never gave me even a young goat so I could celebrate with my friends. But when this son of yours who has squandered your property with prostitutes comes home, you kill the fattened calf for him!' 'My son,' the father said, 'you are always with me, and everything I have is yours. But we had to celebrate and be glad, because this brother of yours was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is found.'"  Luke 15:29-32

This is probably going to be the shortest blog I ever write, but some points are better left short and sweet.

This Sunday the sermon was about love and one of the scriptures used was the one of the prodigal son.  My husband and I went home and went back over that story and something clicked for me for the first time.  The older brother says ‘this son of yours’ but when the father answered he said ‘this brother of yours’. 

You can take this parable in a couple different ways; I can see it fit with the older brother being Jews and the younger brother being Gentiles.  Or I can see the older brother being those who have been saved their whole lives and the younger brother being newly saved people.  Either way, the Father is always God.

When we, as Christians, see other people sinning we have a tendency to write them off, to say well God you deal with them.  To say, God he’s your son.  God gave me a clear message in this passage, they are my responsibility to.  He says, he’s your brother.  The Bible tells us to rejoice when others rejoice, and mourn with others mourn.  Do we, as Christians, do this?  What this is saying is when God kills the fattened calf for a brother or sister we need to be happy for them, rejoice with them, love them, not be jealous of them.  When something bad happens, when someone is mourning, we need to have compassion on them, pray for them, love them.  The people around us are our ministry, the stranger on the street, the person in the car beside you, or the co-worker down the hall, they are all in your life for a reason.  God has put love in each one of us, not so that we could hoard it or hide it, but so that we could share it.  We have a responsibility as Christians to show the love of God to those around us, they aren’t just His children, they are our brother’s and sister’s.