Our women's ministry blog is up and running again for the 2025-2026 ministry year! If you are interested in being a contributing author, we would love to talk with you about that. Please reach out at women@gracecomm.org.

Home is more than a place - it is a concept. Whether our lived experience of home is positive or negative, we all have a sense of what it is supposed to mean. Home is meant to be a place where we are always welcome, where something yummy is baking in the oven when we walk inside, where laughter and freely offered hugs abound. It is filled with love, comfort, and the ability to relax and just be yourself. Home is where we belong. Advertisers certainly know that it is a powerful concept, as evidenced by the number of ad campaigns that will trade on the associated imagery during the holiday season.

I've been thinking a lot about home lately. It is the place we say we want to go when everything feels overwhelming or our burdens get too heavy. And yet I am not certain any one of us ever fully experiences all that home means this side of heaven. It is a sentiment that is captured well in a song called Homeward Ache by Heather Suzanne and Ian Austin. It explores how wanting to go home is a lovely characterization of the longing to finally be with God our Father. I encourage you to give it a listen.

If you declare with your mouth, “Jesus is Lord,” and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. For it is with your heart that you believe and are justified, and it is with your mouth that you profess your faith and are saved. As Scripture says, “Anyone who believes in him will never be put to shame.” For there is no difference between Jew and Gentile—the same Lord is Lord of all and richly blesses all who call on him, for, “Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.”

How, then, can they call on the one they have not believed in? And how can they believe in the one of whom they have not heard? And how can they hear without someone preaching to them? And how can anyone preach unless they are sent? As it is written: “How beautiful are the feet of those who bring good news!”

Romans 10:9-15

Home isn't where you're from, it's where you find light when all grows dark.

-Pierce Brown

A shorthand way of explaining that someone is welcome in your home is to tell them that you'll leave a light on for them. It communicates that day or night, you are welcome here.

There are all kinds of reasons that it can be difficult to tell people about Jesus. And sometimes I think we build it up in our heads more than we need to. When we share the gospel, what we're really doing is inviting someone to come home, telling them that our Father has left the light on for them. What more wonderful news could there ever be to communicate?