Series: Ohio CFO 1961

Closing the Ohio CFO in 1961, Starr Daily draws five laws of prayer out of the prodigal son. They run from the boy’s first selfish “Give me” to the humbled “Make me as one of thy hired servants.” He reads the robe, the ring, the shoes, and the fatted calf as the father’s four gifts. The son rehearsed his repentance speech the whole way home, he notes, only to have his father’s arms cut it off.

Starr Daily presents kindness as the homely form of redemptive love that opens every closed door, moving from the athlete Rafer Johnson to George Washington Carver dying as the Hallelujah Chorus played, and back to his own conversion in prison.