Overall Wit & Wisdom

Bill Chitwood for Progressive Dairyman

Here it is June, the month of weddings. My Grandpa used to say every man in his lifetime should be blessed with at least one good woman and a good coonhound. I have been so blessed.

I looked for a long time, too. It seemed that every time I found a girl that could cook like my mother, she looked like my father.

My wife wasn’t always a good cook. I remember the first meal she ever prepared for me. I heard her sobbing in the kitchen, so I went in and asked her what the trouble was. She said, “I was washing off the ice cubes in hot water and now I can’t find them.”

A young couple at our church had requested the preacher marry them immediately following Sunday morning worship. So when the time came, the minister arose and said, “Will those who wish to be united in the holy bonds of matrimony please step forward?”

There was quite a stir among the congregation, and when it subsided, 16 women and one man stood before the altar.

Every year during the month of June you see the same ads in the paper from people who want to get married.

“Man with a plow would like to marry a woman with a tractor. Please send a picture of the tractor.”

“Young man with a can of corn would like to meet a young lady with a can of green beans. Object – Succotash!”

“Young man Republican would like to marry a young lady Democrat. Objective – third party.”

I was on a trip to deliver some bulls to a big dairy out west of Dodge City, Kansas, the other day and trying to listen to the radio to help keep me awake.

Out in that country you don’t have a big choice of radio stations, unless you have one of these newer satellite radios, and I don’t. So you have to listen to the two stations that are out there. One was country and the other was a Christian station.

Just as I switched to the Christian station the lead announcer said to all of us listening, “Call everyone you know and have them tune in to hear this next speaker.”

Sure enough, he was worth listening to.

The guest speaker had been a traveling Evangelist all his life and had preached all over the country. He said he had resolved one of the biggest questions of his life.

He said he was eating a meal with one preacher and his wife. The man was the pastor of the church and his wife played the organ. They both talked about their families, and they told him about their three boys and how proud they were of them. They were all very successful and followed the Lord’s teaching in all of their lives.

A few days later the pastor’s wife called the Evangelist and told him she would like to talk to him about their fourth son. They had not brought him up at the meal. She said he was a prodigal.

You all remember the parable about the prodigal son in the Bible, how his father had given this son his share of inheritance and the prodigal son squandered it in a foreign land. With the money all gone, things got really bad. While the prodigal son was working, feeding some hogs, he thought of how much better his father’s servants were than his present state, so he decided to return home.

You remember how in the Bible the father saw the prodigal son coming and welcomed him and had a fattened calf prepared for the feast prepared to rejoice in the celebration of the return of his prodigal son.

The preacher’s wife told the Evangelist about how their fourth son was raised just like the other three, but he went astray. The Evangelist preacher said he was told this same story in almost every church he traveled to preach in.

What gets most parents of these prodigals is the scripture in Proverbs 22:6. It says, “Train up a child in the way he should go: and when he is old, he will not depart from it.”

The Evangelist said, “I did not have a very good answer for the pastor’s wife and the many others who told of their prodigal children.”

He awoke one night a few days later at 2 a.m. and got up. He wrote out a list of the prodigal children he knew from his years in the ministry. The list came to 30 young people who were now adults.

In the next six months, the Evangelist took the time to contact all 30 of these young adults on his list to meet with them and talk with them. All 30 of them knew they were doing wrong and that the way they were choosing was not the way they had been raised.

As the years went by the Evangelist kept track of all 30 of the prodigals to see how their lives might turn out. Fifteen of them turned their lives around and came back to their families and started to live the life they were raised to live. Fifteen of them kept living the fast life apart from God and family.

The Evangelist said he investigated to see what might have been the difference. What he found shocked him. The difference was the same thing that happened in the parable. The 15 who were warmly welcomed back to the family turned their lives around, while the 15 who were told their families never wanted to see them again went back to the fast life.

Prodigal children worry parents and friends, and the way this Evangelist reconciled this behavior was that regardless of what parents did or did not do probably didn’t have anything to do with whether their child became a prodigal. All 30 children who were now adults said they knew they were not doing what was right.

The Evangelist closed his talk that day on the radio by saying “Adam and Eve, the first two people on earth, had one son, Cain, who killed their other son, Abel; and Jesus chose 12 disciples; one, Judas, who betrayed Him.”

Anyone of us can be praying for a prodigal child or young adult. We each have the free will to make choices about how we live our lives, even the choice of forgiving or receiving forgiveness.

Keep praying and facing the challenges of your life, and remember humor helps us all along the way. PD