Broken Bread
Daily Devotions from the Daily Light
by Evan Hopkins
June 10
The younger son ... took his journey into a far country, and there wasted his substance with riotous living.--Luke 15:13
The spirit of this younger son has been thus described. He was "weary of restraint, panting for independence, unable longer to abide the check of a father's eye." This is the spirit of a man in his estrangement from God. He seeks his own master. The parable teaches us that as the father yeilds to his son's request, so God permits us to make the trial of seeking our own pleasure in forgetfulness of Him. Along the road of self-will and self-seeking, man passes from bad to worse, till at length, like the prodigal, he comes to his last extremity. We have to thank God there is always a famine in the land that is far away from God. But even when the famine came, the prodigal was not humbled sufficiently to allow of his turning his steps homeward. He must needs better his condition first. But self-efforts to better our condition bring us into lower depths of misery and degradation. He becomes a swineherd. It was then, in his hunger and despair, that the crisis came.