What do you think of when you hear the word compassion? Is your view of God, a God, who is compassionate is that one of the first attributes of God that you think about that. He is compassionate that he looks on people with compassion?
Here, we have a group of three stories, with the third story being the most important one, a man with two sons. Where I heard that story before a man had two sons.? I remember there was a story of a man named Isaac, who had two sons. He saw the first born, and Jacob, the second born, though they were twins. Jacob, the second board goes out away from home, and then comes back. That story parallels the story of the people of Jacob, the Israel lights who were sent into exile, and then came back. It is interesting that Jesus places the sinners with the people of Jacob, and the phrases and teachers of the law, with the people of Esau.
What do I find? Perhaps the most fascinating is that the father goes to both sons in compassion. Yes, he goes out to the younger son running and throwing his arms around them when he’s coming back from the far country, but he also goes out to the older son, who is throwing a fit because he welcomed to back his brother. Can the older son see that this is his brother? Or will he only see him as his enemy? It seems that he can only see his father as his enemy too.
