Homecoming

I am with you now, I will protect you everywhere you go, and I will bring you back to this land. I will not leave you until I have done everything that I have promised you.” Genesis 28:15

Well, it is the first day of October.  It’s the unofficial start of the fair and homecoming seasons in my hometown.  As many of you know homecoming is a time to celebrate our school and our athletes with a big game. The week before the kids, faculty, and staff dress up and have fun activities.  We have a parade full of cars and floats.  Kings and queens dress up in their best. The cars are clean. The band is ready to put on a show. The cheerleaders and ball players are ready for the big game.

We come for the game and to cheer on our alma mater.  However, the biggest and our most favorite part is the tailgating.  We come together from the golden class down to the newly minted alumni to eat, reminisce, and fellowship.  We see people we haven’t seen in years. Some seem like they haven’t aged since graduation other’s… well you get the picture.  We no longer worry about who hanged with who, who fought who, or who went with who. We are just glad to see each other and share a good laugh. No matter what the score ends up being, we had a blast and its the best homecoming ever. It is a great feeling to know that we can always come back home and have an awesome time.

That same love we show each other at homecoming is how God feels when we come back home.  He welcomes us back no questions asked.  He accepts us where we are. He spends time with us and celebrates the journey we took to get back to him. He doesn’t care about how much we messed up. He doesn’t keep score of how many times he bailed us out. He is overjoyed that we came back home to be with him.  Tailgating and football tickets cost us some cash but with God, all we have to do is accept Him and repent.

Most of us have left our hometowns after graduation, but our hometown is our hearts. We may have left the safety of God for a while but He never left us. His love protected us. His grace kept us, even though we didn’t deserve it. It’s a wonderful thing to know that how far we go in life, we can always come back home. To my Mohawk family, have an awesome homecoming week.