Going Home
Throughout Scripture, God reveals Himself as a God who waits. From the Garden of Eden where He called, "Where are you?" (Genesis 3:9), to the father in the parable of the Prodigal Son who watched the horizon day after day for his son to return (Luke 15:20), we meet a God whose heart is always turned toward His children. He is never indifferent. He is never too busy. He never stops looking down the road.
Perhaps that is why one of the greatest commandments after loving God is this: "Honor your father and mother" (Exodus 20:12; Ephesians 6:2-3). Honor is more than financial support. More than holiday visits. More than birthday gifts and occasional phone calls. Biblical honor is expressed through presence, attention, and love.
We live in a culture that celebrates productivity, busyness, promotions, and packed calendars. We measure success by what we've accumulated and accomplished. Yet Scripture gently reminds us that "Life is more than food, and the body more than clothing" (Luke 12:23). The things that matter most are rarely the things that fill our calendars—they are the people God has entrusted to us.
In Psalm 90:12, the Psalmist wrote, "Teach us to realize the brevity of life, so that we may grow in wisdom.” Wisdom doesn't simply count our days; it treasures the people who fill them.
Today I want to tell you a story that I read and it pulled at my heart strings, and I bet it will pull at yours too. It may ring true in your heart as it did mine. Listen to the story with not only human ears, but spiritual ears as well. Here we go.
My name is Thomas Miller. I am 46 years old, and though I have no mugshot and no rap sheet, I am a thief. I have spent years committing a quiet, bloodless robbery against the only two people who would trade their last breath to keep me breathing.
My father, Arthur, is a man whose skeleton seems to be made of iron and North Carolina red clay. He spent forty-two years in the heat of a furniture factory, his lungs coated in finish and his fingers scarred by saws. Today, he sits in a recliner, defeated by the complexity of a streaming remote.
My mother, Evelyn, is the woman who once managed to make a single chicken and a bag of potatoes feel like a Sunday feast for six. Her laughter used to be the heartbeat of our home. Today, she loses her breath just navigating the hallway to see if the mailman brought anything other than bills.
And me? I am the one stealing their oxygen. I am the high-altitude thief of their remaining hours. I don’t do it out of cruelty; I do it out of "success." I live four states away in a city of glass and granite, where being "slammed" is a status symbol we wear like a designer watch. I have a mortgage that keeps me awake at night, two teenagers who only look up from their screens to ask for gas money, and a digital calendar that looks like a game of Tetris played by a madman.
I convince myself I’m a "good son" because: I call every Sunday at 6:00 PM (usually while checking my work email on a second screen). I send the "Grand Deluxe" gift basket for birthdays (ordered via a thumb-press while waiting for coffee). I pay a local kid to plow their driveway so Arthur doesn't have to touch a shovel.
But I know the truth. I am trying to buy an indulgence. I am trading wire transfers for actual presence. I give them the crumbs of my life—rushed voice notes and "likes" on Mother’s blurry photos of her garden. I’ve tricked myself into thinking that providing for them is a substitute for being with them. I was dead wrong.
Last month, a conference in Columbus was cut short. Suddenly, I had a dead afternoon, a rental SUV, and no obligations. My parents live ninety minutes south, in one of those Appalachian towns where the coal dust has settled and the clocks seem to have stopped in 1994.
I didn't call. I just drove. I pulled onto their gravel drive around 3:00 PM. It was a Monday. The autumn sky was that bruised, beautiful purple-grey. The sun was still high. And that’s when I saw it.
There, on the porch of the house where I once crashed my first bike, the light was burning. Not a sleek LED or a smart-bulb. It was the old, amber bug-light in the frosted glass housing. It was glowing—defiant, warm, and utterly unnecessary in the bright afternoon glare.
I sat there, my hands gripping the leather steering wheel, feeling a surge of "modern" annoyance. The efficiency expert in my brain started doing the math. “Dad, do you know what the utility rates are doing? Why are you wasting juice?” I could hear my own condescending logic. I didn't get out right away. I just stared at that stubborn yellow glow.
I am 46. Arthur is 82. Evelyn is 80. Their world, which once encompassed PTA meetings, union halls, and neighborhood poker nights, has folded inward. It has shrunk to the dimensions of that small brick ranch. The hunting trips are over. Most of their friends are names on headstones now. Their universe is now the kitchen table, the pharmacy drive-thru, and that porch.
When I walked in, the TV was blaring—some game show host shouting over canned applause. Mom gasped, nearly dropping her knitting, looking at me as if I were a hallucination. Dad tried to haul himself out of his chair, his joints popping like dry kindling. A flash of genuine physical pain crossed his face, but he buried it under a grin.
“Well, look at this,” he rasped, his eyes turning glassy. “The big shot finally ran out of gas in our neighborhood.” We spent five hours doing nothing. And it was the most productive five hours of my decade.
I ate a piece of dry pound cake I didn't want. I listened to Dad explain the territorial disputes between the local blue jays as if it were a front-page scandal. I updated the software on Mom’s phone.
As the sun dipped below the hills, the house grew still. The silence in an old couple's home has a weight to it. It’s a physical thing, made of ticking grandfather clocks and the low hum of the chest freezer. I stood at the sink with Mom while she rinsed the coffee mugs. Through the glass, I saw the porch light, finally making sense in the gathering dark.
“Mom,” I said softly. “When I got here today... it was the middle of the afternoon. Why was the porch light already on?” She stopped scrubbing. She looked out at the yellow beam, her expression one of tired, infinite grace. “Because, Thomas,” she whispered, “we never know when the door might need to be found.” The wind was knocked out of me.
She didn't say, “We knew you were coming,” because they had no clue. She wasn't just talking about me. She was talking about my brother in Seattle who is “scaling his business.” She was talking about the grandkids who haven't called since Christmas. She was talking about the world that had outpaced them.
That light wasn't an electrical waste. It was a lighthouse. It was a signal fire burning on the edge of a forgotten coast, screaming to the darkness: “We are still here. We are waiting. We haven't locked the heart of this house yet.”
I realized then that my parents aren't just "getting older." They are navigating a loneliness that my "connected" generation cannot fathom. We have 10,000 followers, but we have left the people who gave us life stranded on a silent island.
I stayed the night. I slept in my old room, surrounded by trophies for sports I no longer play. The next morning, I watched them. I saw how they both flinched with hope every time a car tires crunched on the gravel outside. I saw how Dad, a man who once stood up to corporate giants, now checks his phone every ten minutes hoping for a text from a grandson that will never come.
They don't want my "Premium Flower Arrangements." They don't want the fancy gadgets. They don't want me to "fix" their lives. They just want me. They want the sound of my laughter in the kitchen. They want to hear me complain about my boss. They want to sit in the same air, watching the news, and feeling the quiet reassurance that they haven't been erased yet.
The truth is, parents never retire from their job. Their knees give out, their eyes fail, but the job description stays the same: They wait. They keep the light on. They hold the fort until we decide to come home. Our only job is to show up.
If you are reading this right now, scrolling through your feed, please—stop. If you are lucky enough to still have them—those slow, analog, sometimes frustrating people who gave you everything—do not wait. Don't wait for the holiday. Don't wait for the milestone. Don't wait for a "gap in your schedule." There is no such thing as a good time. There is only this time. And please, do not wait until you are standing at a casket.
Go to them. Go on a random Monday. Drive the extra hours. Cancel the meeting. Just walk through the door. Sit on the faded sofa. Eat the stale crackers. Listen to the story you’ve heard thirty times before, and listen to it like it’s a sacred text. Look at their faces. Note the new wrinkles. Memorize the rhythm of their breathing.
Because a day is coming—sooner than your ego wants to admit—when you will pull onto that street, and the porch will be dark. The house will be silent. And you will realize, standing on that cold driveway, that you are no longer a child. You are an orphan. You will look at that black window and you would give every promotion, every stock option, and every dollar in your retirement fund just to see that "wasteful" yellow light flicker on one more time. You will beg God for sixty seconds to walk through that door and say, “I’m here.” Don’t be a thief. Go home while the light is still burning.
WOW! As you can tell, I still cry reading this story because I feel it deeply. Not only with my parents, but also with my children who are grown. Do you feel it too?
There are 6 truths that came to my mind as we read this story.
1. Honor your father and mother. Exodus 20:12 reads: "Honor your father and mother. This is the first commandment with a promise: If you honor your father and mother, 'things will go well for you, and you will have a long life on the earth.’”
2. Love is shown by presence. 1 John 3:18 reads, “Dear children, let’s not merely say that we love each other; let us show the truth by our actions.
3. Time is precious. Psalm 90:12 reads, “Teach us to realize the brevity of life, so that we may grow in wisdom.”
4. Relationships matter more than success. Proverbs 15:16 reads, “Better to have little, with fear for the Lord, that to have great treasure and inner turmoil.”
5. Don’t neglect what matters most. Ephesians 5:15-16 reads, “Look carefully then how you walk, not as unwise but as wise, making the best use of the time for good.”
6. God’s heart is always waiting. Luke 15 20 reads, “While he was still a long way off, his father saw him coming. Filled with love and compassion, he ran to his son.”
As I think about that porch light, I realize this story isn't just about our parents. It's about God. Every porch light in this story points us to the greatest story ever told—the story of a Father who never stops waiting for His children to come home.
Jesus painted that picture in Luke 15. The son had wandered far from home. He had made poor choices. He had wasted his inheritance. He had convinced himself that he could never be welcomed back. Yet while he was still a long way off, his father saw him, was filled with compassion, ran to him, embraced him, and welcomed him home. That is the heart of our Heavenly Father.
Maybe today you carry regret. Perhaps you've been too busy chasing success, too distracted to invest in the people who matter most, or too far from the God who created you. The beautiful truth of the gospel is that you don't have to clean yourself up before you come home. Jesus already did everything necessary through His death on the cross and His resurrection to make a way for you to be forgiven, restored, and welcomed into God's family. How? Romans 10:9 says,” that if you confess with your mouth the Lord Jesus and believe in your heart that God has raised Him from the dead, you will be saved.” Let that be true for you today!
