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The parable of the prodigal son came to have new meaning for me after I preached on the passage in a small Christian church in Turkey. My congregants could read meaning, for example, into the famine that the younger son experienced because our city is in the throes of a serious water shortage. We have gone without running water for days at a time. The reaction of the Turkish mayor was to call for public prayers for rain in the traditional Muslim fashion, and Turkish churches followed suit by praying for rain. It was a similar shortage that drove the prodigal son to desperation and created an occasion for repentance.