Prodigal: Time to play, where are the softballs?
Me: I don’t know, but that reminds me of a story.
This is from Charles R. Swindoll
I remember stealing six softballs when I was working as a stock boy in a five-and-dime store in my early years in high school. And I remember trying to find a place to hide them when I got home. I don’t know what in the world I planned to do with six softballs. To this day it just baffles me, the logic of it. But I stuck them in the back of my drawer and my mother found them. My father presented himself to me and told me that we were going to make a trip back to the store where I was going to talk to the owner and I was going to confess.
I will never forget his instructions on the way, I mean, I was sitting there just dying thinking about it. It was just like passing razor blades to think about standing in front of my employer. Well, I stood there and told him what I had done. My dad was waiting in the car. He didn’t go in with me. And I heard my boss say, “You’re fired.”
I stumbled back out to the car and sat down. I was as low as I could remember ever being. On the way, I remember my dad beginning to rebuild my emotions. I had done wrong, and I had learned in incredible lesson. He didn’t overdo it, but he drilled into me that when you steal, you get fired. And if you don’t get fired at the moment, you lose something that can’t be bought with any price, and that’s your self-respect. I remember, too, we go on the subject of what in the world I was gonna do with those six softballs.
But there was something about the ornament of grace that came around my neck from my father who before we went in the house took the time to put his arms around me and to understand. This teenage kid was most concerned about my father’s not telling my friends. And as far as I know, he took that story to his grave and never told on me.
Then the LORD rained upon Sodom and upon Gomorrah brimstone and fire from the LORD out of heaven; Genesis 19:24 (KJV)
Jennifer Van Allen
www.theprodigalpig.com
www.faithincounseling.org
