This parable is a thumbnail sketch - a Book for Dummies to explain how Lost in Space I am when I wander away from God’s will in my life. I repent by allowing the Holy Spirit to convict me of my wrong. Then I must confess my wrong to God, ask forgiveness and come home to Him.
Robert Burns’ poem “To a Mouse On Turning Her Up in Her Nest with a Plow,” November 1785, contains the following lines: The best laid schemes o’ mice and men; Gang aft a-gley [often go awry], And lea’e us nought but grief and pain, For promised joy.
John Steinbeck used Burns’ poem as the inspiration to his novel Of Mice and Men where two spindle stiffs (hobo’s in the Depression Years) wander around central California working odd jobs on farms and ranches. They are not part of the current migrant working force from central and South America. They are homeless beggars, the working poor, the prodigal sons without a home to go back to.
Lennie Small keeps asking his more intelligent friend George Milton to remind him – they aren’t like those stiffs who don’t have anyone. They’ve got each other. They are pursuing a dream of someday owning their own ranch together. Lennie likes to say that they’re going to “live off the fat of the land.” Lennie Small, is ironically very big and strong. But he is child-like in his emotions and has a diminished mental capacity. His feelings are tender and innocent. But he tends to kill the small mice or puppy dogs he cuddles in his arms by unwittingly crushing them in his powerful hands. His fetish to touch soft things eventually causes him to accidentally kill his boss’s daughter-in-law. George Milton’s hope of an earthly paradise regained on earth is lost. Their American dream is incompatible with their Paradise Lost-ness just as our own plans often go astray from God’s plan for us. George and Lonnie’s grotesque family relationship self destructs – unlike pastor Joahnn Wyss’s 1812 story Swiss Family Robinson. The futuristic version in “Lost in Space” replaces Robinson Crusoe living on a deserted tropical island with an unknown distant planet in outer space. We identify with shipwrecked “Gilligan’s Island” people as a humorous and likeable group, who can’t get back home. But it’s hard to imagine how I could get out of a fix like theirs with such self-reliance and resourceful productive schemes to escape cannibals, monsters or just plain evil scientific inventions from going haywire. “Coming to my senses” ain’t so easy for me. I’m more of a dummy and I need God to step in and show me the way to get out and/or stay out of trouble.
Lord of the Flies and Of Mice and Men show us where we end up without God’s grace and intervening Holy Spirit. Choirboys crash in a deserted island and turn into cannibals and worship a wild pig with swarming flies around its bodiless head.
The truth is that all truthful stories about human character ultimately reflect a smearing disappointment to our pretentious “good character.” We live in a slippery sliding world where every popular celebrity is one step away from scandal and disgrace. Our life stories can easily become a “Smear-able Parable” for the next Cracker Barrel
Campfire group of overly self-confident sophomores in our adolescent let-me-do-what-I-want-to-do culture of today. Peter Pan makeovers like the movie “Hook” show lost boys and girls get their way in a Neverland invaded by childish messy food fights and trite name calling so that time eaters like Tick-Tock Crock can devour our evil Captain Hooks. He’s history. And what about the rest of us? Well, we’re sitting here in our Sunday go to meeting shoes, ready for another story that will get us to dreaming about where we want to go and not necessarily where God invites you: to repent, to confess and to come back home.
O to be a kid again! Johannes Brahms and Klaus Gorth’s song sings, “O wuest ich doch den Weg zurueck zu, den lieben Weg zum Kinderland” (O, if I only knew the way back to the blessed land of my childhood.)
Repent means turn around and come back. But can we really come back? The prodigal son did, but he was still dirty. He still stank from the pigs and all the rottenness that he had become. He was still a Squanderer wastrel prodigal from the tropical 3rd world. He clearly remembered what it is like to be Lost in lost-ness – Lost in Space. He was still a dummy and could still be ridiculed by his big brother. Just because Daddy threw a party for the returning failure didn’t mean that big brother was going give up his levirate privilege to receive the majority of his father’s inheritance.
Evangelist D.L. Moody tells of an artist who wanted to paint a picture of the Prodigal Son. He searched through the madhouses, and the poorhouses, and the prisons, to find a man wretched enough to represent the prodigal, but he could not find one. One day he was walking down the streets and met a man whom he thought would do. He told the poor beggar he would pay him well, if he came the same time next week to his room and sat for his portrait. The beggar agreed.
The beggar showed up the next week at the artist’s room. “You made an appointment with me,” he said, when he was shown into the studio. The artist looked at him. “I never saw you before,” he said, “you cannot have an appointment with me.” “Yes,” he said, “I agreed to meet you today at ten o’clock.” “You must be mistaken; it must have been some other artist; I was to see a beggar here at this hour.”
“Well,” says the beggar, “I am he,” “You?” “Yes,” “Why, what have you been doing?” “Well, I thought I would dress myself up a bit before I got painted.” “Then,” said the artist, “I do not want you; I wanted you as you were: now, you are no use to me.” His reward was available when he came without pretenses. When we come “just as I am without one plea” then Christ will save us. Repent, Confess and Come Home.
Repent: It is important to recognize that the son was still in his lowest and filthiest place in life when he talked to himself: All those hobo’s working for my father sit down to three meals a day, and here I am starving to death. I’m going back to my father. I’ll say to him, Father, I’ve sinned against God, I’ve sinned before you; I don’t deserve to be called your son. Take me on as a hired hand.”
Your outward appearance, social status, reputation as a looser doesn’t have to change. God wants to restore, invade and change your life.
Confess: Heavenly Father, I’ve sinned against you; I don’t deserve to be called your child or to gather the crumbs off Your table.
Come Home: Come home. Ye, who are weary, come home. Earnestly tenderly Jesus is calling. Calling o sinners come home.
Pray with me please: Dear Heavenly Father, we’re coming home to You now. Guide us not into temptation. Deliver us from evil. For Yours is the kingdom the power and the glory as we repent, confess and come back to You in the name of Jesus Christ, Amen.
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