Category Archives: On Circumstances
Coming Home
Image by JayMantri from Pixabay
They say you can never really go home. Your birth place as you knew it has changed. Many of your family and friends have moved away. There are different people in the homes they once occupied. There are businesses that have either closed or changed ownership.
The cost of living has gone up hugely from what it was 50 years ago. I’ll never forget my mother describing beef roast for 88 cents a pound as highway robbery. Bread was 32 cents a loaf. A gallon of gas was about $1.00. That was a good thing. Those large gas guzzling cars went maybe at best 15 miles to the gallon. Imagine how much that would cost now.
$10,000 U.S. in 1970 is equivalent in purchasing power to about $76,729.64 today, an increase of $66,729.64 over 52 years.1
I could get a one pound slab of chocolate at our local drug store for 50 cents.
A can of pop out of a pop machine was 25 cents.
If you spent $100 on groceries, you could come home with bags of them. That’s much harder to do now.
Going into the grocery stores is not joyful; you cringe at the prices for basic food necessities such as meat, fruit and vegetables. We wouldn’t have thought three years ago paying $4.00 a pound for blade roast was a special. It is now.
My wife, Karen, says grocery shopping is extremely stressful. When was the last time you saw most people smiling at the grocery store? We did before CoVid.
The cost of the war in Ukraine along with all the measures to keep staff and customers as safe as possible because of CoVid, are some of the factors that have caused the cost of living to skyrocket..
The way education is delivered has changed because of CoVid. Much of learning is online rather than being at a high school, college or university campus. While there are many schools going back to on site instruction, those students whose parents are afraid to send their children back to school, are being offered the option to have them continue their studies from home.
While we can’t go back to life the way it was before CoVid and the war in Ukraine, there is a home we can come to any time we need it.
We can come home to God.
Wherever you are, whatever you’re going through, no matter how alone you feel, you can come home to the Father. No matter how angry you are, God is there. If you have anxiety about the state of our world, God is there. When it feels like there is more hate than love in this world, God is there. If you feel abandoned, God will never leave you. He is always there. You can call out in the faintest of whispers. He’s there.
This is not religious speak. This is truth. This comes from lived experience. In the toughest of times God has always been there. When there were times we could barely pay the rent on our apartment, God always has come through. We only had a few cents left in our bank account, but our rent was paid.
God showed us a way to make Spam a special meal. We add broccoli, shredded cheese, and fried onions. It’s delicious!
In the most challenging of times, God has been there for us.
We have had times where we felt God was far away from us, but He never went anywhere.
Whenever you need to, you can ask God to show you the way home.
Perhaps, you feel you have gone far away from God. You’ve sinned so much that the Lord would never welcome you home to Him.
The father welcomed the prodigal son back home. He didn’t demand this wandering son to leave and never come back. He welcomed him home with open arms.
You are only a silent or spoken call away from God.
I came across this quote from anonymous. Anonymous writings often are more powerful because they get to the heart of the truth.
“The will of God will never take you,
Where the grace of God cannot keep you.
Where the arms of God cannot support you,
Where the riches of God cannot supply your needs,
Where the power of God cannot endow you.
The will of God will never take you,
Where the spirit of God cannot work through you,
Where the wisdom of God cannot teach you,
Where the army of God cannot protect you,
Where the hands of God cannot mold you.
The will of God will never take you,
Where the love of God cannot enfold you,
Where the mercies of God cannot sustain you,
Where the peace of God cannot calm your fears,
Where the authority of God cannot overrule for you.
The will of God will never take you,
Where the comfort of God cannot dry your tears,
Where the Word of God cannot feed you,
Where the miracles of God cannot be done for you,
Where the omnipresence of God cannot find you.”
God is as close as the thought or mention of His Name.
While we can never go back to our birth place as it was, we can come home to God. We can reach out for His love any time of the day or night. God can meet you wherever you are, whatever circumstance you’re in.
If the prodigal son who lived a riotous life spending all he had on the pleasures he craved can come home, so can you.
God’s love is there as much for the rich as it is for the poor.
God loves the prostitute and the destitute.
He loves the drug addict and the alcoholic.
He loves the gambler and the greedy.
He loves the givers and the takers.
He loves the abused and the afflicted.
God loves you just as you are.
He wants you to become all you can be. Will you let Him do that?
I pray that you will feel you can always come home to God.
If you came home to God now, wouldn’t that be a Christmas season you’d never forget?
Source:
Dr. Kevin Osborne is Dean of Psychology and President of Student Affairs for St. James the Elder University. He lives in Timmins, northern Ontario, Canada, with his wife, Karen. They are powned by their 20-year-old kitty, Her Royal Furriness, Princess Katherine of Timmins. In their leisure time they enjoy the company of friends. They like reading, writing, and cooking. Kevin loves to buy books. Karen has a rule. For every book that comes in one goes out. “But, Karen, I don’t want to let go of any of the books.” The dream and the reality are two different things. One does what one must.
Mind's Seat 