p. 3 | Returning to Father's House by C. M. S.

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Aug 12, 1915

Returning to Father's House

By C. M. S.

IN many things we are all prodigals. We have taken that with which our Father endowed us, and have used it for our own purposes. Then when failure has come, when the frosts of adversity have seared and burned the tender shoots of our selfish hopes, we “come to ourselves;” we resolve to “turn over a new leaf.”

That is what the prodigal did when he “came to himself.” He acknowledged his wrong, and, as soon as he did, he began to yearn for the better way. But, in making that resolution, he did not stay where he was. He said, “I will arise and go to my father.” It was doing that that made his turning a success; that brought joy to his father’s heart; that brought him back again into the estate of manhood.

Right there so many fail in their good intentions. They stay right where they are; they forget to go to Father’s house, where there is “bread enough and to spare” to keep their souls from famishing. They depend on their own efforts right in the enemy’s country, where they met all their disaster. The enemy surrounds them on every side, and soon they are his again. In fact, they were never really free from his clutches so long as they remained away from Father’s house; and they had no power to resist the strength of Satan’s minions.

Many would-be Christians are feeding swine in the pastures of this world. But feeding husks to swine is no business for Christians to be engaged in. Once having taken the name of Christ upon us, our place is at the Father’s table in the Father’s house. It is our great right to be in that place where we can take from the Father’s hand that bread of life which is designed to feed the hungry souls of men and women, and will feed our own souls, also.

Many, very many, who have joined this people have permitted something to cause them to leave the household and go out into the swine pastures of this world; and Satan will do everything in his power to keep them there until the fires of Jehovah’s vengeance burst upon the world—until there is no longer opportunity to return to Father’s house. But, notwithstanding in what we may have shown ourselves prodigals in the past, let us arise and go to our Father. He is waiting for us with a heart filled with the most loving tenderness; he will give us glad welcome; he will own us as his; he will keep us from falling if we permit him, and make us again the glad children of his household, to go no more out forever. C. M. S.