Going Home......

   I read in Luke 4 this morning:

   "All who were there, watching and listening, were surprised at how well he spoke. But they also said, “Isn’t this Joseph’s son, the one we’ve known since he was a youngster?”

   There is a phrase that I have often heard, and often used, that goes something like this:

   "You can never go home."

   As I tried, in my mind, to put the Scripture passage together with some thoughts from yesterday, while walking this morning, this other thought came to me. Jesus goes back to Nazareth, but the people there could not accept Him in His new role. To them he would always be the carpenter that made things for them, the son of a carpenter, the man they thought they knew.

   Yesterday, we spent the day in Jacksonville, at a hospital, sitting with a friend whose husband was having an operation that involved open heart surgery and 4 bypasses. As the day wore on, and the surgery was completed, and all of the particulars of the past few days had been played out in words and thoughts, I had the realization that life for this couple, and for all that knew them, would never really be the same again.

   But isn't that the same for all of us? Our lives move on, and no matter how we would like to turn the clock back, and we all do at one time or another, "we can't go home".

   Even though, this very morning, I walked right past the house that we lived in for 10 years, I did not live there any more, and could not just begin again right there. I have great memories of living there, and it was a happy place for me, but that house belongs to someone else. I can visit, literally, but can't reside on a permanent basis.

   We all have memories, good ones and bad ones, but we can't live there. Life is today.

   God, help me to see this day for what it is, with its opportunities and challenges, and help me not to treat it as just another day.

   "This is the day that the Lord has made. I will rejoice and be glad in it."