[T]his son of mine was dead and is
alive again; he was lost and is found.
—Luke 15:24
Russian novelist Fyodor Dostoyevski was twenty-eight when he was sentenced to ten years of exile in Siberia. The prison camp was dreadfully depressing: “the prisoners stink like pigs,” he wrote; “there are vermin by the bushel.”
Yet, it was here, reading the small New Testament that had been slipped into his hand, that he became acquainted with the Parable of the Prodigal Son. “[I]t was amidst those stern and awful solitudes that he, a homesick and penitent Prodigal, found the road that leads to the Father’s house,” wrote F.W. Boreham.
The story of the Prodigal revealed to Dostoyevski the heart of the Father. Even in the dismal environment of Siberian exile, he wrote: “God gives me moments of perfect peace; in such moments I love and know that I am loved.”
Don’t deprive yourself of Bible reading.
A single sentence can be life-changing.