¹¹ To illustrate the point further, Jesus told them this story: “A man had two sons. ¹² The younger son told his father, ‘I want my share of your estate now before you die.’ So his father agreed to divide his wealth between his sons.

¹³ “A few days later this younger son packed all his belongings and moved to a distant land…“

Luke 13:11-13a

Dear God, I don’t think we sit with the father in the parable (you) enough. We don’t know how much time passes between verse 13 and verse 20 (“So he returned home to his father. And while he was still a long way off, his father saw him coming. Filled with love and compassion, he ran to his son, embraced him, and kissed him.”), but it was long enough for a famine to set it and drive the boy to his knees, so it was presumably a long time. And you sit there and wait for so many of us. You just wait, and wait, and wait.

There’s a lot that happens while we wait in situations like this. There’s a lot of second-guessing–at least there is for humans. Is there second-guessing on your part too? There’s sorrow. Mourning. Anger. Frustration. There’s pain. To think of the pain that you expose yourself to is incredible. I know the pain I’ve felt, and it must be insignificant compared to what you feel and on a much broader scale. What a mess life can be.

Father, going off of what I prayed yesterday and combining it with this prayer and scripture today, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.

In Jesus’s name I pray,

Amen