(Luke 15:11-32) "There comes a time in everyone’s life when he has to think about his life and reach a conclusion about its meaning. So, although many of us are still young, let’s take this opportunity to think about our lives. The conclusion is obvious. Our lives are destined to lose everything and fall into despair. If we could find any happiness or joy in our lives while living on this earth, we could say that we did not waste our lives. But what is the actual reality? If we consider our lives carefully from beginning to end, the inevitable conclusion to reach is that we have squandered our lives and lost everything. Our lives are already destined to be lost completely. Do we have to reach our last day to realize this? No. Even just thinking about it now, we can easily realize that our lives will indeed be squandered. The conclusion is obvious if we really think about it hard. All of us were born from the wombs of our mothers, right? The end of life is so evident for all of us to see as soon as we are born. It’s completely hopeless. Once born, we grow up weaned on our mothers’ milk, go to kindergarten, elementary school, middle school, high school, college, and even grad school to receive a doctoral degree. But by the time we are in middle school, we already know all about our lives. We think to ourselves, “Soon I will go to high school and then move onto college. I’ll get married, have kids, and get a job or start a business to support my family. Maybe I’ll be fortunate enough to be successful and own my own company. But by the time I accumulate my assets and grow my company, I would have turned 50 and 60. My body will start to ache then. No sooner than this I’ll turn 70 and my sight will deteriorate. By the time I am 80, I would want to do nothing but lie down. Life will lose its appeal, my body will languish, and I will die in vain.” In other words, one already knows all about life by the time he is in middle school. If death marks the end of our lives, we’ve already come to know all about life even if there are many things that we haven’t experienced in this world. Those who realize that life is meaningless like this and look for God are the truly wise ones that prepare for the future. Put differently, those who prepare for the perfect happiness of the future while they are still on this earth are the truly happy ones. Don’t you agree with this? It’s written in the Bible here, “But when he had spent all, there arose a severe famine in that land, and he began to be in want.” When we are young, we have everything in abundance. We are in good health, and we are also full of ambition. However, the day will come inevitably when we squander our lives, lose everything, and face a great famine. Destitute times will visit us without fail. No matter how rich one is, and no matter how much food he has, there will be a time when he is visited by physical privation, when he can’t even put food in his mouth and chew it. Regardless of how rich you are with the things of this world, there will inevitably come a time when you find yourself destitute in your heart and spirit. Sooner or later, you will be short of the faculty of the mind, certain joys, and the pleasures of the body. Before such privation visits us, we need to realize clearly that our lives are completely lost. Indeed, we have lost everything in life. Although some people realize this, many people are still wasting their lives obliviously. Sooner or later we will lose everything. What then is the task that remains for us? We need to think about the following question: How can we restore everything that we’ve lost? This Means That We Should Think about How We Can Have True Faith We must look for this truth. Let’s then return to the Word of God and examine this Truth from now on. In today’s Scripture passage, the Lord admonished us to realize as soon as possible that we cannot find satisfaction from any religion. Only when we realize this can we restore the original image of man. Take a look at the second son here. It’s written that when this prodigal son went out to the world, he wasted all his possessions and had to eat the pods that the swine ate. The pods here refer to the teachings of the false religions of the world." Paul C Jong