Heart Tracks - The Way Home

    A missionary tells the story of the day her 8 year old son and his friends became lost while exploring on the large coffee plantation his family lived on.  Disoriented, they could not see the house, so they went to the highest nearby hill, but still could not see it.  Then the boy, Caleb, had the idea of climbing a tree in order to see further.  After climbing several, he finally cried out, "I see the cross!"  The landlord, with hopes of a good harvest every year, had erected a cross in the front of the house wishing that God, Jesus, and Mary would bless his efforts.  When Caleb saw the cross, he knew the direction in which he had to go.  He later told his mother, "When I climbed the tree and saw the cross, I knew that I was home."  Caleb's experience brings to each one of us the question, "What device or compass are we using in order to guide us to what we would call "home?"  What is our home, and will the path we're presently walking take us to the home we were created for, or lead to something far different, deadly different?  Are we taking, as the author Proverbs wrote,  the road "That seems right to us, but its end is death?"   

    We are living in a time when a large segment of the church is very reluctant to display a cross in their meeting places.  "It tends to offend unbelievers" is the reasoning.  They're completely right in what they think, and terribly wrong in what they do.  The cross has always offended the flesh of unbelievers.  How could it not when it so often offends the flesh of those who profess to have come to it?  It has been a stumbling block from the beginning, yet Jesus, with full knowledge of the cross before Him, said "I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life.  No one comes unto the Father but through Me."  That way has always and will always include a cross.  We cannot, as one of Pastor Lloyd Ogilvie's professor's once told him, "Sneak around Golgotha."  The way home is always going to be by way of the cross.  We cannot sneak around it and there is no other way.
    We are living in a world and culture that become more disorienting every day.  For a people who are born lost, we can only become, if it's possible, "more lost."  All the hills and trees we seek to climb in our own strength in order to get "home" will fail us.  It's only when we see and come to the cross, that we will get there.

Only by the cross will we find our way home.  Only by the cross may we say, "I was once lost, but now I'm found."  Can you, can we, truly say that today?  Have the power of His words in John 12 become real in us, "And I, if I be lifted up from the earth, will draw all men unto Me."  Lifted up on His cross.  Have you been drawn?  Have you come?
    Ruth 1:7 tells us that when Ruth and Naomi, disoriented and lost in the land of Moab, they "Took the road that would lead them back to Judah."  To home.  That road is Christ and His cross.  You may well find yourself in Moab today, disoriented emotionally, physically, and most of all, spiritually.  The road of Christ lies before you.  It'll lead you home.  Take it.  Come home.

Blessings,

Pastor O