Luke 15.11-32 The word ‘prodigal’ means ‘wastefully extravagant’. By this definition, who is the most prodigal person in the story? The younger son runs through all his assets and does so not in reckless business ventures, which would be bad enough, but in dissolute living. However, the most profligate member of the family is the father. He's prodigal not only with his wealth , but also with his good name and his love, which he showers on both of his undeserving sons despite their ingratitude and their readiness to publicly humiliate him. Let's start with the younger son. We all know people who dream about what they'd do if somebody died and left them an inheritance. Perhaps we sometimes have that dream ourselves. To cater for that appetite lurking in us, there are even programmes on TV about detective agencies which spend all their time tracking down the distant relatives of wealthy people and giving them the good news that they've inherited a substantial amount o
A blog by a Methodist minister in the UK