When It’s Time to Turn Back Home (to God)

RECONCILIATION is life’s end point if God has anything to do with it.  That all transactions would have their logical conclusion in it, and all truth would be requited fairly and justly; that above all, love would abound, one for another.

I’ve taken to the term when it’s time to turn back home as a way of describing this reconciliation balancing act.

Reconciliation has reached its aim when someone has recognised their need to set things straight on their own account.  Reconciliation always puts relationships and situations more together, bringing life to the fullest fulfilment of hope, joy and peace.  Life’s not about division.  It’s about integration.  It’s about inclusion.  And it’s about results and outcomes that prove better than anyone involved could have imagined, because only God can do that.

God’s best miracles are the relationships
He puts back together, where kindness,
empathy and understanding shine forth.

Turning back home occurs when we realise we’re wrong about something.  Or, it involves knowing someone else was wrong, but that wrong is forgiven them; that we rise above that wrong to love them anyway, because we understand how prone we are to being wrong.  Turning back home occurs when we’re ready to make a heartfelt apology, make amends, do better next time, and seek forgiveness.

Turning back home occurs when we realise that staying depressed or in grief involves more pain than the pain of changing; of lifting out of the mire.  (Which is no slight against clinical varieties of mental illness, for which nobody should judge, and only the qualified should advise.  Nor is it a slight on those who have experienced excruciating loss, for which grief is the normal and necessary response.)

Turning back home occurs when God has spoken, even in rebuke, and we receive correction with a glad heart profited to growth.

Turning back home is repentance — to change tack by 180 degrees, with immediacy of attitude and alignment of behaviour.

We enter a time of turning back home at salvation — every moment henceforth is to be a step in the right direction.  That inevitably leads to many challenging events and situations, some humiliating, some inspiring, all learning.

***

How delighted must all heaven’s host be when we finally turn back home!

Christian faith is about endeavouring to please God within Christian community.

© 2016 Steve Wickham.