What do you do when you return home? I think a number of us have little routines when we get home. Maybe it’s a place where you immediately go when you get home, or a pet that gets some attention, or a person that you talk to right away. I remember my parents calling me out when I was a teenage boy that I would open the refrigerator every time I got home, no matter what time it was.
Our homes are important to us. They are places that we feel safe and secure. They are places where we can let down our hair and decompress. And because of that, there can be a danger that shows up in them. Because we feel so safe and secure, our homes can sometimes get a little negative. They can be places where we feel like we can complain about that person in our class or that issue at work – and sometimes, that negativity can get overwhelming and even turn into sinning against the people we’re talking about.
That’s why this week’s Red Letter Challenge could be an important reset for us together as a congregation. In Luke 8:39, Jesus talks to a man who had just been filled with demons (talk about a bad day you need to decompress from!), and tells him to “go home and tell everyone what God has done for you.” He doesn’t say to go home and talk about how awful things were, because they were – the guy had a legion of demons in him. He says to go home and tell everyone what God has done.
We get that you have bad days, and sometimes it is nice to be able to vent when we go home or when we talk to that person who is “home” to us. But Jesus is challenging us this week to put that in the perspective of what God has done for us. This week, return to your home and talk to the people there about what God has done for you and see how that changes the conversations to the grace that we share in Jesus.