Something for father’s day
Like Mothering Sunday, Father’s Day can be fraught with all kinds of complications when it comes to a Sunday service. Maybe the best thing is to concentrate on God as father. I wrote the story below for our ‘teatime special’ in advance of Father’s Day yesterday. Please feel free to take it and make use of it f you can. I called it ‘a boy comes home’.
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This is the story of 4 pigs, 2 boys and one amazing dad. The boys lived a long time ago on a farm way out in the countryside where they helped their dad with all the jobs around the farm. Some days they helped with the ploughing, some days with herding the cattle…and on some days with the stinky, smelly job of cleaning out the barn.
One day, the youngest son had had enough. First he got bored, then he got really bored , then he sulked, then he puffed…and at last he decided to tell his dad all about it. “Dad”, he said. “I’ve had enough. I can’t stand it any more. One day, when you’re gone I’ll have some of your golden coins – so can’t I just have them now?” His dad looked sad, his brother looked shocked, but he handed the coins over all the same – jangling in a little cloth bag.
With that, the younger brother took off like a rocket. He couldn’t wait to leave the cows, and the plow and the farm and his brother all behind. As fast as his legs would carry him, he headed for the city and began to spend and spend and spend those gold coins in his bag. He bought everything he wanted, he made new friends who only wanted his money and so he bought things they wanted too. Before long, he reached into his bag to pay for the next thing, and there was nothing left – not a single coin. He opened it up, peeked inside, turned it upside down and shook it – but they were all gone.
Whatever was he to do? To keep himself from starving, he got a job on another little farm- looking after the pigs. There were four of them, and he named them noff, oink, snuffle and grunt. Each day he would care for them, and some days he thought they looked better cared-for than he did. “Oh piggies” he said to them one day “whatever shall I do?”. They looked at him with their muddy pink noses. “Noff” said noff, “oink” said oink, “grunt” said grunt, and snuffle just turned away and snuffled.
“Turn away” thought the boy. “That’s what I shall do. I’ll turn away from all the silly mistakes I’ve made and I’ll go back home to dad.” Waving goodbye to the pigs, he set off back down the road. As he got closer, his heart started to beat a little faster. “Whatever will dad say”, he wondered. “Will he be really really cross”? He needn’t have worried.
Just as he rounded the last bend in the road, he could see a figure at the end of the farm driveway. It was his dad – looking out down the road, hand across his eyes, to see if maybe today would be the day when his lovely boy came home. When the two of them spotted each other, they both ran as fast as they could – the boy on his young legs, and the dad on his old ones. When they met up they had the biggest hug you can ever imagine, and the boy never ran away again.
Image:smartdriving.co.uk
Jesus told that story about His dad – and you can find it in the Gospel of Luke
