If only the elder brother...
Illustration
If only the elder brother of our parable would have cared as much for the younger as our elder brother, Jesus, cares for all the lost sons and daughters of the Father.
From the First World War comes this story of two brothers in the foremost trenches at the worst point of the Flanders battlefront. The younger brother ventured out at dusk into no-man's-land, was caught in a burst of enemy machine-gun fire, and collapsed into a shell-hole, incapacitated. His older brother, seeing what had happened, determined to go and help him. His buddies in the trench tried to restrain him. "You will only be shot yourself; it won't do any good." But he did go out, and though he was also shot, managed to make it to his brother's side. When darkness came, they were both brought in, the older brother with deeper wounds than the younger. And what the younger brother had said to him was this: "I knew you would come!" So ought we to come, to rejoice over and help our "younger brothers" in the body of Christ.
From the First World War comes this story of two brothers in the foremost trenches at the worst point of the Flanders battlefront. The younger brother ventured out at dusk into no-man's-land, was caught in a burst of enemy machine-gun fire, and collapsed into a shell-hole, incapacitated. His older brother, seeing what had happened, determined to go and help him. His buddies in the trench tried to restrain him. "You will only be shot yourself; it won't do any good." But he did go out, and though he was also shot, managed to make it to his brother's side. When darkness came, they were both brought in, the older brother with deeper wounds than the younger. And what the younger brother had said to him was this: "I knew you would come!" So ought we to come, to rejoice over and help our "younger brothers" in the body of Christ.
