Homecoming

Homecoming. 

All across America, high schools and colleges will be preparing for Homecoming. The football game, the dance, the king and queen. At Millikan High, we used to sell big yellow chrysanthemums with a blue pipe cleaner bent into the shape of an M. To welcome back the alumni.

Tears amid the alien corn. I’ve always considered those tears of homesickness but this morning it dawned on me that Ruth’s also may have been tears of joy – of homecoming. Ruth left her home in Moab because she loved her mother-in-law Naomi and felt a duty to look after her – but also because she had glimpsed God in her mother-in-law and was drawn to Him. She makes a big declaration about wanting to live where Naomi’s God is worshipped, and for Him to be her God and His people to be her people. So in that sense, she had come home.

I am so like Ruth. Oh, it’s not that God isn’t known in Long Beach, but I didn’t have a personal encounter with him there. I didn’t need him (or at least, didn’t realize I needed him) like I did when all of my natural support was six thousand miles away.

You can step into the Kingdom of God anywhere. Jesus said the Kingdom is near, is all around, is in you. But for me, I stepped into it in the northeastern corner of Scotland, over thirty years ago.   

So now I pray with fervour, your kingdom come ... on earth as it is in heaven.  The kingdom is here, yes, but much of the corn – the food we feed our minds, bodies and spirits on – is alien to that kingdom.

So I’m in the kingdom, and the kingdom is in me, but I wrestle daily to see God’s kingdom of justice and peace break out. I thrill to be part of the process. And I know that mine are tears of joy. And an excitement to see others come home to the King, where nobody is an alien. Everyone is a child of God, and carries the family name. 

And maybe wears a yellow chrysanthemum, with a J on it, for Jesus.