With a heavy heart, the father watched his rebellious son march toward his Waterloo. Dad knew that the boy’s adventurous spirit would lead him into dangers, depravity, and defeat. Words of warning and counsel in the past few years had been met first with a shrug, then a coldness, and recently with a glare of contempt. 
        As he watched the knapsack that clung to his son’s shoulders disappear over the hill, the stern words of the Old Testament method of dealing with an incorrigible son forced themselves upon his aching heart: If a man have a stubborn and rebellious son, which will not obey the voice of his father, or the voice of his mother, and that, when they have chastened him, will not hearken to them, then shall his father and his mother lay hold on him, and bring him out unto the elders of his city, and unto the gate of his place, and they shall say unto the elders of his city, this our son is stubborn and rebellious, he will not obey our voice; he is a glutton, and a drunkard. And all of the men of his city shall stone him with stones, that he die. (Deuteronomy 21:18-21) 
        "What can I do? What must I do? Are there any other options? Will he ever return? Will he repent? I love that boy. I’ll forgive him if he comes back home." A cacophony of chords daily played upon the stretched strings of the father’s heart. Even the passing of a few short—yet very long—years did not dull the emotional dirge, the fear that his son was unwilling to come back home, or was even dead. 
        Down in the pigpen, a change was taking place. The ache in the boy’s stomach was overwhelmed by an even greater pain: a longing in his heart to get out of this mess, to go back home, and to start living right. As he listened to his conscience, his head began clearing. When he came to himself is the way Jesus described it. 
        As his thin, tired thighs dragged his dirty, aching feet toward home, the prodigal’s heart wondered what dad and mom would do. "Will they tell the farmhands to lock the gate? Will they simply bar the door? Will they let me back in? Will they tell the elders of the town to drag me to the outskirts and mercilessly send me to eternity with a barrage of stones? All I can do is tell the truth and ask for mercy."
       The minds of many of Jesus’ listeners were no doubt running ahead to how they thought the story should end. "That kid’s going to get what’s coming to him. Dad’s going to throw the bum out. He doesn’t deserve another chance. The stink of the pigs will never enter his mother’s scrubbed, squeaky-clean home." 
        Jesus surprised the money-hungry publicans and the power-mad Pharisees. Their callous hearts never dreamed that Dad would forgive and not retaliate. So they listened unbelievingly as Jesus described the homecoming. But when he was yet a great way off, his father saw him, and had compassion, and ran, and fell on his neck, and kissed him…The father said to his servants, bring forth the best robe, and put it on him; and put a ring on his hand, and shoes on his feet: and bring hither the fatted calf, and kill it.
        He killed the calf, not the son! 
        That’s God’s attitude toward the sinner. Rebels can return to Him and be welcomed. He postpones His justice and advertises His mercy. The sickening smell of sin doesn’t nauseate Him. Jesus smelled that stench on Calvary when He, the holy Son of God, became guilty of the vilest wretchedness ever devised and practiced. The Father ‘made him to be sin for us.’ He died for us so we wouldn’t have to. 
        God still waits at the door, watching down the road, to welcome anyone who no longer wants to play head games with Him. The warm water is drawn in the tub, and the ring and the robe are sized to fit perfectly.