Come Home

by Pastor Ed Evans

            I got up late that morning.  Working on a project the night before, I stayed up late and slept in the next morning. 

            Nearly one o'clock, I got up, showered, took my daily ration of pills, made coffee and sat down in my favorite chair to enjoy it.  The house was quiet and to break the silence, I clicked on the television.  Up came a program about The Gaithers.  The quartet with some of my favorites was in the middle of a song.  Don't recall which one. 
But the program was nearly over.

            The scene was a small country church with large, lit candles up and down the main aisle, with the

             They began to sing their last song, "Come Home."  As I listened to their harmonizing a special poignancy filled me and I wondered why this song should mean so much to me.  Then, as I listened to the words, I understood. 

            My Lord had died on a painful cross, on a hill named Golgotha, naked before His enemies, to free me from the sins that passed for the life I had led.  And even now, if I claimed I never sinned I would be lying, and even those my Jesus both knew and covered for all time through His blood.  Then, before a disbelieving world, and in consensus with prophecy after prophecy throughout ancient times, God the Father raised the Son from the grave, so that we have a living Savior who knows our life in the flesh, knows our emotions, our hurts, and our hopes.

            And now, down through the empty halls of time, whatever happened to me, whatever happened to you, comes the call of the Savior, "Come home....come home."  While there were times I was not faithful to Him, He was forever faithful to me, and the song "Come Home," was His call to me, across the ages, "Come home ... come home."

            Wherever you have wandered, wherever you have lain, for personal reasons, for what you believe are very logical reasons ... it doesn't matter.  It's not so someone else wins, or He wins, not even so you win.  He loves you, He cares about you.  You know what you have done, He knows what you have done, said, left undone.  But ... He's not accusing you, the one who loved you first is simply saying, "Come home ... come home."

            Perhaps coming to Guild of Christ at http://www.guildofchrist.com/, or one of the Facebook online church pages, Guild of Christ or Christian Church Online will help you get home.  Another good spot is my friend Pastor Bernie Lutchman Jr's blog, The Write Stuff, at http://bernielutchman.blogspot.com/.  They are places of worship built around praise, prayer and communion with the Living God.  Not home, but they are on the way home.

            We all have some sense of where home is.  Home has different nuances for each of us.  But through it all, there is one home for all of us, and that is where our Lord Jesus Christ is at.  Wherever Jesus is, there is home.  And so there is special poignancy to His call to you and to me, "Come home ... come home."