“‘My son,’ the father said, ‘you are always with me, and everything I have is yours. But we had to celebrate and be glad, because this brother of yours was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is found.’”

Luke 15:31-32

Once upon a time, back in the late spring of 1965, when I was in the 2^nd grade, we were all sitting at the dinner table, when there was a knock at the front door. My father went to answer the door, but something very unusual happened: He stepped outside and closed the door behind hm. When it was apparent that he wouldn’t be coming right back, and that none of us, including my mother, had the slightest idea what was going on, she told my sister and I to hurry up and finish eating. We both knew that tone, and neither of us asked any more questions.

Some time later, my father returned with our half-brother in tow. My Dad quickly told us that Mike was here for a little visit, and they had made a quick trip to the barber shop, and now Mike is going to hop in the shower and then we’ll have some ice cream…

It was some time before I found our the whole story, but I did find out that Mike had been in the 82^nd Airbourne Division of the U.S. Army. The previous year, part of the 82^nd was merged with parts of the 101^st into a special ops unit that was sent to Vietnam for some special operation there. After that most of them returned home and my brother’s hitch in the Army ran out just before his buddies shipped out to intervene in the civil war in the Dominican Republic in April of ’65.

Mike was, let’s just say, a bit shaken up by his experiences in special ops, and then the guilt of being out of the Army right when they we deploying again, and he went and joined up with the Hells Angels, who were on quite a rampage in those days. The only thing he ever told me about that experience was that it was worse than Vietnam.

Consider our father: He, of the World War 2 generation, was so proud that his oldest boy was in the storied 82^nd Airbourne, but when he left the Army and joined the Hells Angels, Mike became a son who was now lost and gone… and then he comes to his senses and repents! In our house, it was the prodigal son all over again (as soon as he got a haircut and shaved off the beard… and bathed).

Our verses above tell of the joy of a father whose son has rebelled and then come to repentance, as he explains the situation to the son who didn’t rebel. (Luke 15:11-32) The purpose of the parable is to teach how our Heavenly Father views all of us, for we have entered into rebellion against Him, and yet through Christ, have repented and come back home again. When this happens, all is forgiven, and the Father and the hosts of Heaven shout for joy!

That’s how it was in our house too, and in the eyes of the 7-year-old little brother, who was way too young for all of the gory details, Mike was just about the coolest guy who ever lived. When I recall those days, and think of how God and the angels of Heaven rejoice when we come to faith, for me anyway, it makes the toughest times shrink to insignificance by comparison.