0296. The Home Forgetting

The Home Forgetting

"And took his journey into a far country, and there wasted his substance with riotous living" (Luk_15:13, l. c.).

1. This journey into the far country took more than a day. There was the first night away from home, before there was the second and the third. When the shades of evening fell on that first day out, the son heard quite clearly the words of his father’s farewell; for the first time, as he lay upon his bed, he seemed to see the look of troubled fear upon his father’s face. He was half mindful to turn back home–but another voice was pressing him on.

And, as day by day he journeyed on, less and less the remembrance of home troubled him. He was becoming dead to the memory of his father’s care. Many new things were coming his way, and "why should I worry" was continually on his lips.

2. Slowly, step by step, he went away. No one travels the downward road in a day. We let the things we have heard "slip away" from us. Our descent is at times so gradual that we scarce detect the fact of our downward trend.

"Drifting away from Christ in thy youth,

Drifting away from mercy and truth;

Drifting to sin, in tenderest youth,

Drifting away from God."

"Why will you drift on billows of shame,

Spurning His grace again and again?

Soon you’ll be lost! in sin to remain

Ever away from God."

Each day, the nearer he got to the far country, the less and less he cared for home. He was entering the land of "no restraint," where free indulgence would be his. No young man can be enamored of a harlot and love his mother, or his sister, or his father or his wife at the same time. The far country is a land where one forgets the home and the father’s care.

3. He "wasted his substance with riotous living." When he left home he had not anticipated this. He thought he would enjoy himself, of course, but that he would apply his skill and multiply his goods. But, the world was so alluring and so gay, he could not resist its call. His "brakes" would not work. He had gotten into the current of the world and it was too swift for his pull on the oars. He was losing out, and he knew it, but he could not stop.

The young men or the young women of today, fascinated by the pleasures of the world, too often lose their bearings, and lose the power to retrace their steps. It is the "movie" and the "theater" and the "card table" and the "dance," and then the other things of even darker hue, and then–a wasted life.

Autor: R.E. NEIGHBOUR