homecoming

Whenever I’m driving around in my car, I love listening to the radio station K-LOVE. If you’ve never listened to K-LOVE, let me just say, you’re missing out. I love the uplifting Christ-centered music they play and the mini devotionals sprinkled in throughout the day. It’s delightfully uplifting. Anyway, despite my gushing, this newsletter isn’t an advertisement for K-LOVE (although I do highly recommend tuning in!)

Normally, I hate radio commercials—they’re actually one of my biggest pet peeves—but for the past few weeks, I’ve turned up the radio every time K-LOVE made an announcement in between songs. 

Did you know this Sunday, September 15th, is National Back to Church Sunday? I had no clue until I heard the commercials. Every year on the third Sunday in September, Christian churches all over the United States come together to throw open their doors to those who may have fallen away. It’s a call to action, an invitation to come back; it’s an opportunity to try again. 

Ever since I heard that commercial while driving home one day, I haven’t stopped thinking about it. I love the concept of Back to Church Sunday, how it’s an official celebration, a homecoming of sorts. One of the things I love most about it is that it’s not focusing on why someone may have walked away in the first place but on the fact that they chose to come back instead.

It reminds me of one of my favorite parables taught by Jesus Christ: the prodigal son. I love that when the wayward son finally makes his way home at the end of the story, the focus isn’t on his prideful mistakes, how long he’s been away, or all that he’s squandered. Instead, the focus is on the forgiving father who’s already waiting on the road to catch the first glimpse of the child he’s missed so much.

In Luke 15:20 it says, “And when he was yet a great way off, his father saw him, and had compassion, and ran, and fell on his neck, and kissed him.” 

If the father in the story was able to see his son when he was “yet a great way off,” don’t you think that means he’d been checking that road every single day since the moment his son had left home? I can picture it now, the father scanning the horizon every morning as he rose for the day and every evening as the sun sank low in the sky. He never gave up. He was watchful and hopeful with arms ready to embrace and a heart ready to forgive. 

I adore the lyrics in Cory Asbury’s song, “The Prodigal Song,” when he says: 

But I never reach the gate before You come running to me. All the words I rehearsed for days, just fall at Your feet.

Lord, I never reach the gate before You come running to me. All the years I threw away in one embrace are redeemed.

While I love National Back to Church Sunday, I’m so grateful that we can choose to come back to the Father in every moment of every day. 

His eyes are on the horizon. His doors are always open. 

Maybe your heart is aching for someone you love who has lost their way. Or maybe you feel as if you’re the one who’s strayed too far from the path to ever make it back home. The truth is, we’re all prodigal children of a loving Father in Heaven, each and every one of us. We’re all prone to wander. We’re all easily distracted from what matters most. 

We squander, we waste, we forget, we turn away—it’s the human condition.

But still, He waits for us to remember Him. But still, He throws a party every time we decide to let His love win. 

“For this my son was dead, and is alive again; he was lost and is found.” 

So let’s Go Back to Church this Sunday and every Sunday. Let’s choose Him again.

Let’s go home.