The other day the newspapers were full of the strangest story I think I ever heard. It was the story of a man who forgot his own name, and forgot his friends and his home and his loved ones and wandered away farther and farther, day after day, and didn't know that he was lost and didn't know where he was going. He was not a poor, good-for-nothing man either, but was a man whom everybody in the city knew, a lawyer and a judge. He wandered far away into the country, living on little or nothing, begging for work, refusing to sit at the table with other people, and satisfied to eat just like a common, ordinary tramp (wanderer). At last he found work, very humble work, and was satisfied.
All this time his wife and friends were worrying about him and thought he must be dead. But he had one friend who refused to think he was dead, and who searched for him day and night. At last he discovered traces of him, and one morning visited the factory where the lost man was sitting at a table making pearl buttons out of clam shells. Without waiting a moment, he went up to him and called him by his right name, and immediately the lost man recognized his friend, and knew where he was and remembered about his home. You can imagine how strange he felt, and how quickly he went with his friend, and how glad he was to get back to his own home and to his dear family.
Somewhere in the Bible I have read a story something like this newspaper story. It is about a young man who left home one day, and never said where he was going, or what he was going to do, or when he would come back. He was rich and had beautiful clothes and many friends, but his money was soon spent and his good clothes soon became ragged, and the only work he could find was with a stranger who sent him out into the fields to feed the pigs. One day when he was in the field all alone, hungry and thirsty, he thought he heard some one call his name. He looked up and down and behind him and all around, but could see no one. He was sure he heard some one call his name, and the story says, " He came to himself," just like the man who was making the pearl buttons. Then he knew where he was, and without waiting to say good-bye he hurried home, and sure enough, his father was standing at the gate waiting and watching for him.
You remember it was Jesus who told that story, and He told it to us so that we would understand that when we forget God and run away from Him we forget our own true name and run away from our best Friend. Hugh Kerr
Coloring Pages of The Prodigal Son:
