"I have Two sons."

Then he became angry and refused to go in. His father came out and began to plead with him. 29But he answered his father, “Listen! For all these years I have been working like a slave for you, and I have never disobeyed your command; yet you have never given me even a young goat so that I might celebrate with my friends. Luke 15. 28-29

This well known parable referred to as "The Prodigal Son" offers multiple interpretations of God's love and forgiveness in the various characters depending on the readers' perspective. Sometimes we identify as the father, sometimes the younger son and sometimes the older son. And the word prodigal can certainly be applied to the younger son as well as the father. The father is as "wastefully extravagant" with his love as the younger son is with his inheritance!

I particularly like the interpretation New Testament scholar Amy Jill Levine used in her children's book Who Counts?. In this book, Levine tells the story of three parables in children's language, and in the "Two Sons" retelling she adds the two pages below. I love the way she rounds out the character of the father, allowing him to realize that he hadn't paid attention to how lost the older son felt. "I have Two sons," he admits and without both he says his family would not be complete. Doesn't that add a lovely conclusion to this age old story? As Levine says in her annotation of the story in The Jewish Annotated New Testament, "Jewish tradition sees fathers as loving all their children, and God as always reaching out to bring each one home." We are not complete as the family of God unless all of us are welcomed home.