How's your heart doing today?

The Prodigal Son is one of those well known parables that it can be very easy to read without looking for anything new in it as you think you know the story and its interpretations so well.  But today i've been given a little bit more of an insight into the older brother...the one who was left behind and feels so left out.

The character of the older brother seems to be a direct reply to the Pharisees and scribes, in response to whose criticism Jesus told the three lost-and-found stories.  The older brother is the upstanding but critical Pharisee who not only knew the religious rules but actually kept them all.  in our context, the older brother is the upright, devoutly religious person, the respected yet resentful churchgoer.  He is the ultimate insider someone who controls the committee meetings, holds the keys, keeps the books, reads the lesson, leads the intercessions.  But in the story it turns out that he is not inside at all, but outside, because even though we may live on the property, a cold heart removes us from God's presence into a darkness of our own making.  No matter how perfectly we keep our religion, it's our heart that places us inside or outside God's presence.

Maggi Dawn


This certainly made me think  -  How's your heart doing today??