again; he was lost and is found.’ So they began to celebrate.
25‘Meanwhile, the older son was in the field. When he came near the house, he heard music and dancing. 26So he called one of the servants and asked him what was going on. 27“Your brother has come,” he replied, “and your father has killed the fattened calf because he has him back safe and sound.”
28‘The older brother became angry and refused to go in. So his father went out and pleaded with him. 29But he answered his father, “Look! All these years I’ve been slaving for you and never disobeyed your orders. Yet you never gave me even a young goat so I could celebrate with my friends. 30But when this son of yours who has squandered your property with prostitutes comes home, you kill the fattened calf for him!”
31‘“My son,” the father said, “you are always with me, and everything I have is yours. 32But we had to celebrate and be glad, because this brother of yours was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is found.”’When personal relationships break down it's usually by one of two routes.
Sometimes relationships are blown apart by 'the big row'. In a marriage, perhaps, it's the discovery of an adulterous affair that is the trigger. In an ordinary friendship it might be some other kind of dispute or injury that inflames tempers. But whatever the precise details, the resulting rift is sudden and explosive. One party tells the other, 'I never want to see you again. Drop dead. Get lost.' Anyone who has experienced this kind of rift in a relationship knows well enough how traumatic it feels. It is like a bereavement. A person you have loved is suddenly snatched from your side, leaving an aching void, which often fills up with bitterness, and certainly with loneliness. It's a shattering experience, and all the more shattering because it erupts into our life with so little warning. One minute everything seems fine, and then the next our whole world has fallen apart.
Devastating though that kind of relational breakdown
