Going Home

Send us Fan MailSunday 16 August 2026As long as my wife and I have been married we have been away from home – i.e. from the places where our parents lived. So we always talked of “going home” for holidays. We always looked forward to this time, even though travelling home sometimes involved vast distances, and the travel, at least in our early days, was sometimes dangerous and not enjoyable. But then we also talked of “going home” when it was time to go back to where we lived. “Home is where the heart is” has become a popular saying. And it’s true. But Jesus added another thought to that:“For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also”. Matthew 6:21.Today we will have another look at our theme for this year from Isaiah – “See, I am doing a new thing”. Many of the Jews from Jerusalem and Judah had been taken off into exile in Babylon. Isaiah, from Chapter 40 in his book, began to offer these people hope. Their time of exile was coming to an end. They would soon be going home. And this would be such a joy to them that the 1,143km journey (on foot) will seem like a ‘walk in the park’. Even though they had a huge, difficult and dangerous road ahead of them, the fact that they were heading home would give them strength, encouragement and joy to last the journey.Our lives are also described in the Bible as a journey and we are called foreigners (strangers) in this world because we are really “citizens of heaven” (Ephesians 2). And our lives are far from easy. We have struggles of all kinds – physical and spiritual – before we get home. But our journey takes on new meaning and purpose, and provides us with comfort, strength and courage when we know where “home” is. And when we trust in Jesus as our Saviour, we begin to understand that the “new thing” is what God does in us daily. By his grace he calls us to live an authentic, genuine life of discipleship as we keep our eyes fixed firmly on Jesus.Pastor Robert Voigt