"And when he had spent all, there arose a mighty famine in that land; and he began to be in want."

I noticed something in the story of the prodigal son that hadn't caught my attention before.

After the father gives his son his share of the inheritance (an extremely disrespectful request to be made when the father was still alive, as it indicates a want of the father's possessions and not the father himself) the prodigal son wanders off to spend the fortune on wild living and sensual gratification. 

After a time we are told that the son runs out of money, having spent it all on his riotous living; yet this is not the reason for his return.

It isn't until the famine comes upon the land that he realizes the folly of his ways.

It takes the son literally starving to death to finally come to his senses, as the story says in the Gospel of Luke, "And when he came to himself, he said, How many hired servants of my father's have bread enough and to spare, and I perish with hunger!"

Alone and in a foreign land, he only realizes the value of remaining with the Father after everything has been taken from him.

Maybe you feel the way the prodigal son did.

The father has loved you enough that when you told him you valued his blessings and the things he could do for you more than a relationship with him, he let you depart and go your own way with all he had given you.

But if we are to learn the lesson that the story of the prodigal teaches us, it's that the father also loves us enough to allow us through the most extreme of hardships that they might bring us back to him.

The Father loves us enough to allow us to suffer the consequences of our own actions, that it might correct us and put us back on the paths of righteousness and back to Him.

Some of us must endure wasteful years of wandering in a foreign land, and we must suffer the famine in the land before we come to the sobering realization that it was never the Father's possessions that we wanted.

It was the Father himself.

Here's the good news, my brothers in Christ.

The Father is waiting, watching earnestly for you to return to Him.

"And he arose, and came to his father. But when he was yet a great way off, his father saw him, and had compassion, and ran, and fell on his neck, and kissed him."
Luke 15:20 KJV