January 11, 2011
Coming Home
I’ve had family members who’ve struggled with drugs, alcohol and homelessness, but none of them ever dropped off the radar for 20 years. In their addictions they always resurface for a handout or a hand up, but then returned to their lifestyle of choice. Ted Williams (now sober) was reunited with his mother after 20 years and is quoted, “Hi mommy, I’m home. I told you I was coming this year. I don’t look the best, but I’m home.” I can picture some late-blooming saints, maybe even some of my relatives, standing before the Lord saying, “I’m home, I don’t look the best, but I’m home.” Paul writes, “…he himself will be saved, but only as one escaping through the flames.”(1 Cor 3:13-15 NIV)
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Gail;
-----Paul was so right on in referring to our existence as being in tents (II Cor 5:2-4) It is not just that everything in this life is temporary, it is also that everything in it is mobile - in a constant state of flux. We look for homes and reside in houses we call homes. But by circumstance or choice, most of us find ourselves in a different one soon enough. Some of us are so on the move that our shelters are less perceived as home than are our frames of mind. But alas, what we perceived yesterday is never quite the same as what we are perceiving today. We find homes amongst loved ones and friends, yet even they change as time passes, or move, or die. Nothing is the same today as it was before. Nothing will be the same tomorrow as it is now.
-----So I look at all aspects of life as part of a tent - all aspects of my life and everyone else’s. Then, where we are now is no longer so much the point as where we will soon be going. Will that be forward, or will it be backward?
-----”Make love your aim,” (I Cor 14:1) “Let all that you do be done in love.” (I Cor 16:14) “Knowledge puffs up, but love builds up.” (I Cor 8:14) Therefore, “We who are strong ought to bear with the failings of the weak, and not to please ourselves; let each of us please his neighbor for his good, to edify him.” (Rom 15:1-2) We certainly know that one returning “home” may be coming back simply for a handout. But the truth is, he has merely staked his tent near ours once again, whether physically or by just bringing his perceptions momentarily close to ours. But that proximity becomes an opportunity for us, in as much as we are able, to lovingly discern the good we have to do for him relative to where his tent has been and to where it can be reasonably presumed to be going. The handout he gets from a spiritually mature person may not be the handout he sought, but it will be the one that does good to his journey.
-----This is why I love the Biblical concept of spiritual growth. It recognizes the stage one is at less than it does the next to which he must go. And it recognizes where he has been least of all. So, it recognizes our lives as being progressions in tents. Implicit in the analogy of tents is the fact that the goal of progress for those brought to life while in tents is the City of God where the Father has His Son building real homes. Everything for them before getting there is just progress.
Love you all,
Steve Corey
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