A Father Welcomes a Lost Son

Fourth Sunday of Lent

Luke 15: 1 - 3, 11 - 32

Jesus often taught by using parables, telling stories about everyday life that people could understand, and then comparing them to God and to heavenly things.

In this story we see a loving father who welcomes home a wasteful and careless son, who came upon hard times and returned home a failure.

The younger son had even lived among and cared for pigs, which under Jewish law made him so ritually unclean that he could not even pray to God. But his loving father slaughtered the very best beef for him.

Jesus reminds us in this story that we have a loving Father in heaven who always cares about us, listening for our prayers, no matter how poor, dirty, lost, hurt, or headstrong we are.

1. What did the younger son ask his father for?

[He asked for half his father's property - the amount he expected to inherit when his father died.]

2. What did the younger son do with the money?

[He spent it as fast as he could on cheap thrills.]

3. Did the younger son get the chance to ask his father if he could work for him as his hired man?

[No, he did not; his father recognized him from far away and was already celebrating his return by the time the younger son got to the house.]

4. What did the older brother do?

[He became angry at his father, sulking and pouting.]

5. What was the older son angry about?

[He was angry at his father's kindness.]

6. Did the father love both sons?

[Yes, he loved them both very much.]