The
Pure Heart
“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”
Luke
15:29
John wiped his brow as he
removed the yoke from his oxen team. They had plowed long and hard today.
“Someday I’ll own all of
my father’s estate. That’ll be something to celebrate. My idiot brother will
have no part…I’m glad. He was Father’s spoiled little boy. He got everything he
wanted and in the end he took what he
wanted and was gone. Good riddance! I don’t care if I ever see him again. But Father just keeps looking down the
well-worn path.
Let him go, I tell him. Let him rot in hell.
He deserves it. After all…squandering your inheritance on harlots?”
John patted the heads of
his oxen and made his way home. Was that
music he heard? What in the world?
“Hey John, your brother is
home. We just killed the fatted calf. It’s Time to party.”
“This isn’t fair! Dad, are
you crazy? This is the boy who lived like a heathen. What about me? I did
everything right. I was no slouch, no bum. When is it my turn?”
“Where is your mercy Son?
Your brother has humbled himself. Turn him away after such a broken heart? I
can’t do that. God won’t let me.”
And so we see two boys.
One did everything right but his father never had his heart. That was all he
truly wanted. The heart he saw was a proud one.
The other, full of sin, begged for mercy and a
tender father saw a heart that was broken a heart that was pure. It was all Father ever wanted. Not perfection—not a
flawless
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