I remember a contest from years
ago. The neighborhood kids had set up a bar and would bend over backwards and kind
of skip their way under it. The idea was to see who could go the lowest. They
asked me, “How low can you go?”
So I tried it. I didn’t do well at all. I was not made to bend over backwards that
far. Some people can get amazingly low.
I don’t know how they do it, or why they would want to. If I tried that now, I think I would hurt
myself permanently.
The prodigal son had gone out on
his own and was now nearing the bottom.
He was feeling very low. He had no money, no friends, and no
encouragement. He finally found the only job in the area – doing the very worst
thing he could imagine. Caring for pigs.
Caring for sheep was quiet and
the animals docile. They reminded the shepherd of how God cares for His sheep.
However, pigs are dirty, eat anything dead or alive, fight amongst themselves,
squeal and stink horribly. Whenever he fed them, they reminded him of his greed
for his inheritance. They didn’t graze peacefully, they displayed their
selfishness loudly. They reminded him of his friends that abandoned him when
his money ran out. They reminded him of how the devil didn’t care about him. He
got so low that he looked around for the owner because he would gladly (fain)
have eaten the hogs’ food.
Some people look like they have
hit rock bottom, yet continue on. I
wonder how low they will go. Pride can
keep a person from repenting.
Pride can keep one in the pigpen –
now, isn’t that an astonishing thought!
“And he went and joined himself to a citizen of that country; and he
sent him into his fields to feed swine. And he would fain have filled his belly
with the husks that the swine did eat: and no man gave unto him.” Luke
15:15-16.
© copyright Kevin T Boekhoff
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