Go Home
“And he did not permit him but said to him, “Go home to your friends and tell them how much the Lord has done for you, and how he has had mercy on you.” (Mark 5:19)
Go home. Go. Home. These two words rang out like the locking of latch and key. After all he’s seen and all his experience, after the broken chains and the beleaguered demons, doesn’t this qualify this formerly demon-possessed man to travel the Judean countryside as one currently possessed by Christ? He reminds me of a young Fred Craddock. At a youth camp one year, Fred was sold-out for Jesus. He was all in. Fred was ready to face the firing squad, to confess Christ over the roar of murderous gunfire, to see monuments built and hymns sung, to lay it all on the line in a winner-take-all onslaught for eternity. But instead, Christ did not ask Fred to cash out his life in a blaze of glory; instead, Christ asked of Fred a nickel and a dime every day for the rest of his life. Go home, Fred.
Go home – go home to the distraught mother, go home to the lone brother, go home to the nosy neighbor and the town gossip whose two lips (appropriately named judgment and condemnation) gawk about the boy who “wasted his life.” Go home, and let them see what Christ has done for you. Going abroad would be a walk in the park, but going home is hard. Yet home he went. Mercy demanded him to go home, so he went and proclaimed of that mercy.
Go home, reader. How great would our sorrow be if our home in heaven was lacking our family on earth? If at the Marriage Supper of the Lamb, we had no familiar faces to whom we could pass the butter? If we lifted up our voices to worship the Lamb, but heard no familiar voices around us? If we saw the world far and wide, but saw not those nearest to our heart in heaven? Would not our selfishness siphon our joy? Reader, “Go home to your friends and tell them how much the Lord has done for you, and how he has had mercy on you.” Let them hear of the mercy of Christ from your lips and see the mercy of Christ in your life. If you want to see your home in heaven, bring heaven to your home.
