Christian the Lion

Send this to someone you love today. A story about a lion raised in London and released in Kenya. Watch what happens when Christian is re-united with his owners in London.

The scene at the end where Christian runs to his earthly conservators reminds me of the Parable of the Prodigal Son

Batoni, Pompeo . Deutsch: Gleichnis vom verlorenen Sohn

Prodical Son Painting.

The parable begins with a young man, the younger of two sons, who asks his father to give him his share of the estate. The parable continues by describing how the younger son travels to a distant country and wastes all his money in wild living. When a famine strikes, he becomes desperately poor and is forced to take work as a swineherd. When he reaches the point of envying the pigs he is looking after, he finally comes to his senses:
But when he came to himself he said, “How many hired servants of my father’s have bread enough to spare, and I’m dying with hunger! I will get up and go to my father, and will tell him, ‘Father, I have sinned against heaven, and in your sight. I am no more worthy to be called your son. Make me as one of your hired servants.'”

He arose, and came to his father. But while he was still far off, his father saw him, and was moved with compassion, and ran, and fell on his neck, and kissed him.

— Luke 15:17-20, World English Bible

The son does not even have time to finish his rehearsed speech, since the father calls for his servants to dress him in a fine robe, a ring, and sandals, and slaughter the “fattened calf” for a celebratory meal. The older son, who was at work in the fields, hears the sound of celebration, and is told about the return of his younger brother. He is not impressed, and becomes angry:
But he answered his father, “Behold, these many years I have served you, and I never disobeyed a commandment of yours, but you never gave me a goat, that I might celebrate with my friends. But when this, your son, came, who has devoured your living with prostitutes, you killed the fattened calf for him.”

— Luke 15:29-30, World English Bible

The parable concludes with the father explaining that because the younger son had returned, in a sense, from the dead, celebration was necessary:
“But it was appropriate to celebrate and be glad, for this, your brother, was dead, and is alive again. He was lost, and is found.”

— Luke 15:32, World English Bible

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