Returning Home

Welcome to today's encouragement from Our Daily Bread. Today's reading, titled Returning Home, was written by Wynn Collier. Walter Dixon had five days to honeymoon before he shipped off to the Korean War. Less than a year later, troops found Dixon's jacket on the battlefield, with letters from his wife stuffed in the pockets.

Military officials informed his young wife that her husband had been killed in action. Actually, Dixon was alive and spent the next two and a half years as a POW. Every waking hour, he plotted to get home.

Dixon escaped five times but was always recaptured. Finally, he was set free. You can imagine the shock when he returned home. God's people knew what it was to be captured, moved far away, and to long for home. Due to their rebellion against God, they were exiles.

They woke each morning yearning to return, but they had no way to rescue themselves. Thankfully, God promised He'd not forgotten them. Zechariah 10 6 reads, I will restore them because I have compassion on them. He would meet the people's relentless ache for home not because of their perseverance, but because of His mercy. Verses 8 and 9 say, I will signal for them and they will return.

Our sense of exile may come because of our bad decisions or because of hardships beyond our control. Either way, God hasn't forgotten us. He knows our desire and will call to us.

And if we'll answer, we'll find ourselves returning to Him, returning home. Today's Our Daily Bread devotional scripture reading is from Zechariah chapter 10 verses 6 through 12. I will strengthen Judah and save the tribes of Joseph. I will restore them because I have compassion on them. They will be as though I had not rejected them, for I am the Lord their God, and I will answer them. The Ephraimites will become like warriors, and their hearts will be glad as with wine. Their children will see it and be joyful. Their hearts will rejoice in the Lord. I will signal for them and gather them in. Surely I will redeem them.

They will be as numerous as before. Though I scatter them among the peoples, yet in distant lands they will remember me. They and their children will survive and they will return. I will bring them back from Egypt and gather them from Assyria.

I will bring them to Gilead in Lebanon and there will not be room enough for them. They will pass through the Sea of Trouble. The surging sea will be subdued and all the depths of the Nile will dry up.

Assyria's pride will be brought down and Egypt's scepter will pass away. I will strengthen them in the Lord and in His name they will live securely, declares the Lord. Let's pray. Dear God, Sometimes, indeed, we feel distant from you. Maybe a prayer we've been praying hasn't gotten answered and we wonder if you've forgotten. Maybe we drifted so far away from you that we no longer hear your voice. Whatever the case may be, Lord, forgive us of our sinful ways and draw us back to you as you have so lovingly been calling us back to safety into the loving arms of Jesus. Thank you, Lord. It's in Jesus' name we pray. Amen.