Luke 15:17

Came to himself. Some people seem to float along on the tide of life without a serious thought until death stares them in the face. For all practical purposes the youth had been out of his head, but the dire need in which he now found himself forced him to come to his senses. Those who live, or rather exist, exclusively on merely the physical level lack the capacity to understand the lessons of life except when these come to them in terms of physical need, desire, or pain. This young man had, as it were, been “away” from himself, but now came back again. He found himself — a new experience, apparently — and began to realize how foolish he had been.

How many hired servants. Note that they were “hired servants,” not “slaves.” Probably the young man had once despised, and possibly even mistreated, his father’s hired servants. Now the lot in life of a “hired servant” in his father’s house appeared highly desirable in his eyes. For all practical purposes he was a “slave,” and starving at that. His boasted liberty had proved to be, in reality, the worst kind of slavery — which it had been all along, though he did not realize the fact. So this was the climax of a life patterned according to his own philosophy of things! His condition was the result of his own folly. The wisdom of his father’s philosophy of life now began to take on meaning for him.