When it is fitting to celebrate and be glad

Thank you for joining me these last few months of 2025 in reading The Parable of the Prodigal Son through a family business lens. It has probably been my favorite Faith and Family Business series over the last five years. (You can find links to my other reflections here.)

Today’s reflection is on the final verse of the story, where the father articulates why it is important to celebrate the younger son’s return:

“It was fitting to celebrate and be glad, for this your brother was dead, and is alive; he was lost, and is found.” (Luke 15:32)

Recall the younger son, after squandering his inheritance, came home and confessed to his father, “Father, I have sinned against heaven and before you. I am no longer worthy to be called your son.” The older son, who was out working in the fields, did not hear this admission, and so assumed his younger brother had returned unpunished – and was terribly upset at the lavish party being thrown for him. (As I suggested in my last post, the older son and the father had also assumed much about their relationship.)

But the father recognizes his younger son isn’t simply home in a physical sense. He is “home” in his understanding of the right relationship with his father. His father had given him everything, and the son had squandered it all. But the son came to realize what he had taken for granted. He repents, and the father then gives him the gift of forgiveness.

I’ve been looking at the story from a family business perspective, but the spiritual implications are clear: God gives, we squander, we repent, God forgives. Our repentance and God’s forgiveness are what move us from lost to found, from dead to alive. And as we celebrate Jesus’ birth, we’re reminded that Jesus is the mediator in this relationship. He takes our sin – our act of squandering – and offers us the father’s forgiveness.

In this final verse, I continue returning to the phrase “It was fitting to celebrate and be glad…” It suggests an appropriateness in the celebration of things being set right between people. As you wrap up the year, I offer a few questions for your consideration:

• What relationship in your family or family business needs to be “set right,” so that you can find a reason to celebrate?

• Have you ever felt or expressed, like the older son, resentment or frustration about a family member or business partner, blocking you from the possibility of reconciliation? How might you try changing your approach to create the chance for a reset?

• Where, like the younger son, have you taken a loved one or a family situation for granted? Where do you need to apologize or ask to be forgiven, so that a relationship can be reestablished?

• Where, like the father, do you need to forgive, and welcome someone home, so that a relationship might be renewed?

Again, thanks for another year of reading and reflecting with me. My reflections will resume mid-January with a broader focus on writers about faith and reflections on family business.