The Journey Back Home

I remember my grandmother relating a story to me about a man that left for the United States to pursue a better life. The man sought jobs far and wide but would never land anything that lasted longer than a few weeks. Through his lack of a steady income, life in the Big Apple was nothing near to better. He was rather plagued with segments of uncontrollable hunger, homelessness and reject.

He often times pondered upon the thought of returning to his home where he knew that even though he had not had all the luxuries he wanted, he was living far better than he was at the moment. The sad thing about that story was that the man died in the United States never receiving a better life for himself. He allowed the thoughts of people ridiculing him for not achieving anything, to cause him to remain living in squalor and eventually die.

For many of us this experience is very real and in many ways we can relate to the story of the man. We may not have gone to another country but in terms of our relationship with God, we have gone very far from home and the journey back home is filled with obstacles and seems almost impossible.

Reasons for us leaving the side of God would differ. You may have felt you were missing something on the other side or you were fed up of the form of church you were having on the inside. You may have fell or faltered in some way and instead of reconciling arms, you were greeted with eyes of condemnation leaving you feeling as if there was no place for you in the so called “church”.

Whatever the reason for you starting your journey away from God, you started and got very far. But for many who have made this journey and are still on the road, somehow we have not forgotten where we came from. Despite all who may have pushed us away, we, like the woman with the issue of blood, somehow know that God is real and if we can only get to him we would be made whole.

For many, they have made that journey away from God while sitting Sunday after Sunday in church, waiting for the manifestation of God’s power to pull them out the hole they have found themselves in.

You may ask, if we know that God is all powerful and more than able to help us why aren't we running to his open arms? Why does this journey home seem to be so long?

In answering such a question, I think we can examine a donkey; the premiere animal of burden. A donkey is able to carry a sizable amount of load at the expense of most of its speed. We, like the donkey, also seek to carry all the burdens we have picked up on our journey away from God at the expense of our speed in getting to God.

We hold on to burdens of pornography, boyfriends, girlfriends, hatred, envy and many other burdens that we try in so many ways to put down so that we may get to God faster, but can never seem to get off on our own.

The interesting thing about God though, is that he knows that at many times we are not able to get to where He is, so He meets us where we are with arms waiting to take our burdens. So trying to lay aside those burdens on our own is not the answer.

He hears our heart’s cry when no one is interested in hearing it. He’s ready and willing to help on our journey back home. So are we going to allow what others would say to cause us to stay and die in our current unfulfilled state or are we going to lay those things aside and like the woman with the issue of blood push through the crowd and finish the journey back home.

Written by :

Adesola Stewart

 

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