Going Home

Thomas Wolfe wrote a book that was published in 1940, after his death.
It is entitled, You Can Never Go Home Again.
He wrote about his own hometown.
Even though the book was a success, the town was angry because of Wolfe’s distorted view.

I thought of the title of that book many times in my life.

I went to Atlanta a few times while in college to visit my soon-to-be husband.
Each year I attended his formal and even went down once for homecoming.
Before traveling home on one trip, a group of us decided to go out to lunch.
A restaurant was chosen and many tables were put together to accommodate us.

We had such a wonderful time together.
The atmosphere, the company, and the food were simply perfect.
It was such a lovely way to celebrate good friendships.
So lovely, we decided to go back to the restaurant and recapture those memories.

It couldn’t be done!
We were all a year older.
We wanted the experience to be exactly the same as the time before.
It was impossible to recreate.

All of us wished that we had left the memory the way it was.
One lovely time with friends.
It would have been far better to make new memories than to try and rekindle old ones.
Now, the second time at the restaurant colors the memories of the first.

My youngest daughter experienced this same thing.
She and some friends decided to go over to the middle school to visit former teachers.
They had visited before when they first got to high school, but it has been a while.
Now, four years later, right before graduation, they went back.

Mom, the hallways were so small; the lockers used to feel so tall to me back then.
Everyone looked so young; they looked at us like we were so old.
Even the teachers were not as tall as I remembered.

You can’t go home again.

It is impossible to recapture the same experience twice.
Impossible not so much because the situation has changed.
Impossible because YOU have changed.
You are not the same person you once were.

It happens to all of us.
When we drive past the house where we grew up.
The driveway that seemed endless when you were little is now quite short.
The bedroom that seemed massive before now feels as if it is closing in on you.

Your horizons have expanded.
Your world has gotten bigger.
You have seen more things and traveled to more places.
You have experienced life a bit more.

In the days when the judges ruled, there was a famine in the land, and a man from Bethlehem in Judah, together with his wife and two sons, went to live for a while in the country of Moab. The man’s name was Elimilech, his wife’s name Naomi, and the names of his two sons were Mahlon and Kilion…Now Elimilech, Naomi’s husband, died and she was left with her two sons. They married Moabite women, one named Orpah and the other Ruth. After they lived there about ten years both Mahlon and Kilion also died, and Naomi was left without her sons and her husband. When she heard in Moab that the Lord had come to the aid of His people by providing food for them, Naomi and her daughters-in-law prepared to return home from there. With her two daughters-in-law she left the place where she had been living and set out on the road that would take them back to the land of Judah.  (Ruth 1:1-7)

In this culture, a widow without any visible means of support was destitute.
Three widows is a grave situation indeed.
Naomi knew that her young daughters-in-law would need husbands again.
She sent them home to their families to provide for them.

Orpah listened to her mother-in-law and with tears went back home to her family.
Ruth refused to go.

But Ruth replied, “Don’t urge me to leave you or turn back from you. Where you go I will go, and where you stay I will stay. Your people will be my people and your God my God. Where you die I will die, and there I will be buried. May the Lord deal with me, be it ever so severely, if anything but death separates you and me. (Ruth 1:16,17)

Ruth was a changed woman.
She had been married and now she was a widow.
Ruth promises Naomi that she will not leave her; that she will go to Judah with her.

Moab and Israel were bitter enemies.
Ruth took a chance going to a place where she was a despised foreigner.
The two women still had no visible means of support.

Ruth gleaned in the field of a kind man named, Boaz.
God commanded gleaning in His word.
It was a command to leave some of the harvest in the field for the poor to gather.

Boaz protected Ruth and ordered his workmen to be kind to her.
Ruth gleaned in the fields and was able to bring some of the barley back to Naomi.
Boaz took notice of Ruth’s loyalty and hard work.
As a close relative, a kinsman-redeemer, Boaz wanted to marry Ruth to take care of her.

Ruth and Boaz married and had a son, named Obed.
Obed had a son named Jesse.
Jesse had a son named David, who was King of Israel.

Ruth, a woman who could not go home again, moved to a new land.
Though a foreigner, she was not a foreigner to God.
God accepted Ruth into His family.
Through the sovereignty of God, Ruth became the great-grandmother of David.
David, Israel’s greatest king, from whose lineage came Jesus, the Christ.

Ruth, who could not go home again to Moab found a new home in Judah.
A new home with a new husband and son.
A new place in the family of God so she could one day go HOME to be with Him forever.
God has a plan and a purpose that is far better than we could ever imagine.