<p>15:32 <i>But it was fitting to celebrate and be glad. For this your brother was dead, and is alive again; and was lost and is found</i>- We are left, as so often, to imagine how the story finished. How hard it would&rsquo;ve been for the younger son to live with the older brother And one day, dear, darling dad would&rsquo;ve died. The younger son would&rsquo;ve had <i>his</i> sons, been called upon to uphold the family honour, make decisions in the village. We are left to imagine how his experience of grace would&rsquo;ve made him judge differently to all others.</p><p>The three parables of the lost which climax in the parable of the lost son all depend for their power upon the many elements of unreality found within them; and the lost son parable requires us to fill in many details, try to finish the story, and to take due note of the crescendo of &lsquo;end stress&rsquo; which there is. To appreciate the full power and import of these parables, we need to try to read them through the eyes of the Palestinian peasants who first heard them. Correct understanding of Scripture requires us to read it and feel it within the context in which it was first given. Bombarded as we are by billions of pieces of information each day, especially from the internet, we only cope with it all by letting it all fit into the worldviews and assumptions which we&rsquo;ve adopted. Words and information and ideas tend to only fit in to what we&rsquo;ve already prepared to house them, rather than us seeing <i>God&rsquo;s</i> word as something radically different, and allowing it to totally upset and change our cherished worldviews, constructs and approaches to life. God&rsquo;s word is still words- although they are inspired words. The problem with words is that we read or hear them, and interpret them within our frames of reference and culture. Take an example: &ldquo;She&rsquo;s mad about her flat&rdquo;. An American takes this to mean that she&rsquo;s angry and frustrated about the puncture / &lsquo;flat tire&rsquo; which she has on her car. But in British English, the phrase would mean: &lsquo;She&rsquo;s really happy and enthusiastic about her apartment&rsquo;. To understand what the speaker or writer means by those words, we have to understand their cultural background. And so it is with the Lord&rsquo;s teaching, aimed as it was to first century peasants. &nbsp;&nbsp;</p>