“The older brother became angry and refused to go in. So his father went out and pleaded with him. But he answered his father, ‘Look! All these years I’ve been slaving for you and never disobeyed your orders. Yet you never gave me even a young goat so I could celebrate with my friends…” “‘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: 28-29, 31-32 NIV)
Over the years, I’ve developed a positive attitude towards the welfare of others. When I pray for something and I hear that others have been blessed with it before me, I say, “They need it more.” Sadly, that was not the attitude of the older brother in the story of “The Lost Son.” When his younger brother returned home after squandering his father’s money on wild living, and his father threw a party to welcome him back, the older brother was resentful. He failed to realize what the father realized: they had to celebrate and be happy because the younger brother had come back home. Unlike the older son, who had always obeyed his father’s orders and didn’t need to be welcomed back into the family, the younger son did.
What’s your attitude towards those who seem to be more blessed than you? Do you, like the older brother in the story, resent the wonderful way God treats them because you don’t think they’re deserving of such treatment, or are you like the father, who realized his son’s need? Remember, God doesn’t prefer some people over others. If He is looking after the welfare of others more, it’s because they need it more.
“It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners.” ~Jesus
(Mark 2:17)
Rising with the Son 