Jesus: The Home Where the Soul Rests

Home is where you go to rest. Home is where your bed is, home is where your toilet is. Home is where you can go and be comfortable, relax and be at peace. I think what we enjoy the most about home is that it’s safe to us. We live in a culture where so many people have insecurities and are self-conscious of themselves. The world we live in and the culture in our world tells so many people to be yourself and be who you think were meant to be. But what has occurred within this idea is that in a search for self-identity so many people have become lost and confused as to who they are meant to be and where their true identity can be found. What is important to understand is that when we try to find our identity, we also seek to find a place for our souls to rest, a place for our souls to have identity and a place for our souls to call a home.

In Luke 15 there is a story about a man who had two sons. This story is titled “The Prodigal Son.” In the story, the younger of the sons asks his father to give him his share of his inheritance that would usually come after the father’s death. The father then divided his property between the two sons and gave the younger son his half of the inheritance. It was not many days later that the younger son gathered all that he had and took a journey into a far country. Here the son began to live a life of fun and excitement spending his inheritance on a wild life of partying and women. But eventually, the son had spent all that he had and found himself homeless and needy. With no source of income, the son hired himself out as a servant. As the son was working and feeding the pigs that belonged to his employer, he was filled with hunger, a hunger so strong that caused him to yearn for the slop that the pigs ate. At this moment the son realized that he could go HOME and try to hire himself out to his father as a worker, for he knew even his father’s servants had it better than he did currently. So he decided to come up with a speech that he would tell his father and tell his father that he knew that he was not worthy to be his son anymore. As the son was making his way home, the father saw his son off into the distance. Feeling compassion for his son he ran out to him and embraced him and kissed him. As the son attempted to give his speech to his father as to why he was not longer worthy to be his son the father called out to his servants to bring the best robe and put it on him and to kill a fattened calf to eat for they were to celebrate the return of the son. The father with great proclamation stated: “For this, my son was dead, and is alive again; he was lost and is found.”

What’s so intriguing about this story is that for us as readers it is easy to question the younger son and ask how he could do such things? How could he leave his father, his home and waste the inheritance he was given? It’s simple really. The son was looking to find his own identity away from home. He was looking and searching for something other than what was the better option. He was looking to be his own person, to be who he wanted to be. He was looking for a place where his soul could find identity. We read this story and question it, but I think we often forget that we are the prodigal son. In life often times our souls will begin to want something other than what has always been there. When this occurs, we begin to allow our souls to wander off and waste the gift we have been given. We start to search and seek after all the “homes” that the world has to offer only to find out they are temporary and more like hotel rooms than real homes.

It took the son to reach rock bottom to realize that he had wandered away from his real home where his father was. It would make sense in this story for the father to tell his son what a fool he was for wasting his inheritance and for returning, but the father ran out to the son embracing him with arms open wide. The father in this story shows us who Jesus is to us. In the times where we wander and we seek out self-identity in the offers of the world Jesus waits for us and embraces us when we return home, though time and time again we find ourselves with the pigs.  Christ embraces us with arms stretched wide, just as they were on the cross showing the widths of his grace, mercy, and love for us.

Home is safe. Home is where we go when we have nowhere else to go. As our souls will often wander I ask the question are you letting your soul rest in its real home? Or are you continually searching for your own identity in the world? Jesus is the home where the soul rests. Is your soul resting in Jesus? Is your soul’s identity found in the saving grace of Christ? Your identity cannot be found in what you want for yourself, and what the world has to offer, but only in the home of who Christ is. So return home sons and daughters. Return home to a Father that embraces us with arms wide, return home to where your true identity is found in something greater than yourself.