{"id":11901,"date":"2024-03-04T00:00:25","date_gmt":"2024-03-03T16:00:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/acky4.com\/wp\/?p=11901"},"modified":"2024-03-03T11:46:16","modified_gmt":"2024-03-03T03:46:16","slug":"down-in-the-pits","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/acky4.com\/wp\/2024\/03\/04\/down-in-the-pits\/","title":{"rendered":"Down in the Pits"},"content":{"rendered":"

Luke 15:14-16 14<\/sup>And after he had spent everything, a severe famine happened in that country, and he began to be needy. 15<\/sup>So going he hired himself out to one of the citizens of that country, and he sent him into his fields to feed pigs. 16<\/sup>And he was longing to be fed with the pods that the pigs ate, and no one gave him anything. <\/em><\/p>\n

In some situations, a person might be able to recuperate and continue life, but the direction of this man’s life is already clear. He has no financial sense or wisdom because it is all about self. So when the economy went bad because of a famine, he was stuck with no financial base and found himself in great need. He had run out of resources. He could have set up a new life, invested his money, and made something of himself in the new land. But instead, he was left with nothing. Many people receive funds from government or family and just waste the money on useful and selfish things instead of working hard and using the money as a launching pad to to improve their situation.<\/p>\n

The younger son finally found a job, but another shock of the parable can be seen. From a Jewish perspective, his job would have been the worst possible. Pigs were considered unclean animals in the law (Leviticus 11:7; Deuteronomy 14:8). Good Jews stayed far away from them. The son had reached the very bottom of his home culture. Feeding pigs in a Gentile country to a pagan boss would have been the worst scenario possible. At least the employer had some pity on the son by providing a job.<\/p>\n

But things got even worse for him because he had no food to eat. The job probably paid little to nothing and obviously did not provide food. The son was so desperate that the food he was feeding to the pigs looked good. No one took pity on this poor foreigner. He had basically become like a desperate refugee, but he was not fleeing from persecution but from a loving father who protected and provided. He was in his dire situation because of his own choices.<\/p>\n

Not every difficult situation we face is from outside forces. Many of our problems come from our own poor decisions, which are often like the younger son–selfish. We reject the blessings and security and seek adventure and freedom. However, when adventure and freedom are controlled by a self enslaved to sin, there are often and usually bad consequences for us. The younger son had some hard lessons to learn.<\/p>\n

For older posts, click\u00a0here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Luke 15:14-16 14And after he had spent everything, a severe famine happened in that country, and he began to be needy. 15So going he hired himself out to one of the citizens of that country, and he sent him into his fields to feed pigs. 16And he was longing to be fed with the pods […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11901","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-devotions","post-preview"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/acky4.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11901","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/acky4.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/acky4.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/acky4.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/acky4.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11901"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/acky4.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11901\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11917,"href":"http:\/\/acky4.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11901\/revisions\/11917"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/acky4.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11901"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/acky4.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11901"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/acky4.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11901"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}