November 25, 2014

• Chapel Talk for 11/25 - The Prodigal Bun

  Have you ever lost anything? How did you feel about that? Maybe you were very sad. Today I will talk about a story that Jesus told about lost things. He told a story about a lost coin, a lost sheep, and now he will talk about a lost son. All of these stories tell us how happy God is when he looks for us and finds us.

  I asked my daughter to help me with this talk. She was a student at Tamasei in high school until 1999. Here are some pictures of her. Maybe some of the teachers here remember her. She loves rabbits and she loves to draw. This is her pet rabbit, Chuchu.

  

  

  He is a carrot artist.

  

  Do you remember going to Imari when you were in junior high school?

  

  A few years ago we went back to Imari and she made some dishes with rabbits, of course.

  

  She drew some rabbit pictures to share with you this morning. I hope that you enjoy them.

  

  In today’s Bible story, a man has two sons.

  The younger son leaves home and goes far away, and the other older son stays home. Both sons are not thankful to their father, and they do not love him or understand his thoughts or his heart. They just want his money and things, and they are waiting until he dies.

  

  The younger son can’t wait until his father dies. He wishes his father was already dead so he could get his father’s money. He is not interested in his father or his father’s plans. He has his own plans and he wants his freedom. He tells his father to give him everything now.

  

  He takes half of the family money and goes away. He doesn’t care about his father’s love, his father’s heart or his father’s sadness. He just doesn’t care.

  

  What does the younger son do with the money? He spends it all, and wastes it on bad friends and parties every night.

  

  

  Soon, all his money is gone, and his friends are gone, too.

  

  He can’t go home, so he gets a job feeding pigs, but it isn’t really a job. He has to live with the pigs, and sleep where they sleep and eat what they eat. It is not enough to eat and the son is always hungry because the pigs eat the food first. He is always dirty from living with the pigs, and he is very sad. He is very sorry that he has wasted his chance at life, he has wasted his family’s money and he is wasting his life. He knows that he might even die if he stays with the pigs.

  

  The younger son remembers his home and his father. At his home no one is hungry or dirty. He remembers how much his father loved him. The only place he has to go is home, but he knows he can’t be a son anymore. Maybe he can just work for his father and get enough money to pay back what he wasted.

  

  The son goes home, because it is the only way that he can survive and not die.

  What is his father doing right now? The father’s love for his son never changed. The father’s plans for his son never changed. He still loved his son very much, and was worried, because he knew that his son would have a lot of trouble and danger, and that maybe he might even die. He thought about his son every day, every hour, every minute, and his heart was always broken. Would his son ever come back alive? The father didn’t care about money. He only cared about his son, and looked for him every day after day after day.

  

  Finally, one day the father saw the thing that he wanted to see the most in the world. He saw his younger son coming back. He did not wait until his son came home.

  

  He ran out to meet him and covered him with kisses. He gave him the best robe in the house, the most important ring in the family, and shoes for his feet. Only the important members of the family could wear shoes. The younger son was a son again and not just a worker in the home.

  

  Now the younger son understood the father’s heart and the father’s love. Now the son wanted to be a part of the father’s plans and the father’s family. Now they were really, truly family.

  

  The father was so happy that his son came home that he had a big party. He invited the whole town, and everyone came.

  

  The older brother didn’t know about the party because he didn’t love his brother and he didn’t care at all about his brother. When his younger brother took half the family’s money and went away, he didn’t try to stop his brother from doing a foolish, stupid thing. When his younger brother went away, he didn’t care. He didn’t worry or look for him at all. He didn’t care that his father was sad because his brother went away. He didn’t care when his father looked for his brother every day. He didn’t care that his father was happy now. He was only angry that his father loved his brother and had a party because he came back.

  

  The father came and asked the older brother to come join the party, but the older brother was only angry.

  

  The younger son made the father sad and said he was sorry. The older son also made his father sad, and he needed to say he was sorry, too. What did he do? I hope that he said he was sorry, too, and loved his father just as his younger brother did.

  

  God is like the father in this story. He never stops loving us, and he never stops looking for us. He is the happiest when we love Him. Sometimes we are like the younger son and do not love God and run away. We need to say that we are sorry. Sometimes we are like the older son and we don’t run away, but we have no love for God and don’t care about Him. We need to say we are sorry for that, too.

  

  God loves us and he is always waiting for us to come back. God is always waiting to give us another chance.

  Let’s pray.
  God, thank you for your great love and care for us. Thank you for the joy that you feel when we come to you with love. Sometimes we don’t notice your wonderful gifts to us, and sometimes we don’t care about your heart or about what makes you happy or sad. Please help us to understand your love and to understand what gives you joy. Help us to understand your heart and to love what you love, and do what makes you happy. Thank you for this day, this school, our teachers, and our classmates. In Jesus name, Amen.

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