Thomas Wolfe famously wrote the novels Look Homeward Angel and You Can’t Go Home Again. To which I would ask, “OK, which is it? Look longingly for home or realize you can’t ever go home?!”

Home is defined ultimately in the heart. Many are homeless but make a family with others who are experiencing the same plight. Some move around constantly but have a location that they clearly would say, “bury me there for that’s where I feel most at home.”

Homecoming is one way to express that sense of being grounded in a location or place but realizing that for many it is not a place that one can stay for long.
The Bible is the greatest depiction of life in community and life as a journey which often separates one from community under difficult circumstances. From the family lineage described in Genesis to the nurturing of Timothy by his mother and grandmother to the itinerant ministry of Jesus who went from house to house and had nights with “no place to lay his head,” we see an endless story of God at work with people in a multitude of relationships.

Yet, it is easy to describe Jesus as committed to the family! A much broader sense of God’s family than we often understand.
This will give us the ultimate joy, tho, when all is said and done as well as realizing that often a brother or sister in Christ is often closer than blood kin.
So, at our church homecoming we come with many notions of home and family, but where all should feel a welcome and “rejoice and are glad in it!”
Happy Kedron Homecoming!

Pastor Barry