Have you ever gone to a class reunion or back to visit a former place of employment? Neither is quite the same, is it? Old classmates seem like strangers. Your old company has survived without you, and previous colleagues aren’t overly interested in reliving “the good old days.” In other words, “You can’t go home again.”

Author Thomas Wolfe initially coined this phrase in his novel of the same name. You Can’t Go Home Again was published in 1940, just two years after his death from tuberculosis at age 37. 

Jesus also knew what it was like not to be able to go home again. The very people whom he had grown up with in Nazareth rejected him when he returned to minister to them. Because of their lack of faith, Jesus warned, “A prophet is honored everywhere except in his own hometown and among his relatives and his own family” (Mark 6:4 NLT). 

Nazareth was not Jesus’ final destination, however. Though he would have to endure continued rejection, suffering, and an agonizing death, Jesus would eventually return to his real home with his Father in heaven.

The apostle Paul reminds us that Jesus’ real home is ours also: “But we are citizens of heaven, where the Lord Jesus Christ lives” (Philippians 3:20 NLT).

Earlier in his life, Wolfe published his most acclaimed novel, Look Homeward, Angel. It seems he too knew that his earthly life was not his final destination. He would go home again.

And so will we.