Welcome to your home with blessing and joy. Come in, daughter. // Tobit 11:17

For the longest time “church” had been a place where I went on Sunday, but toward the end of my time in high school it became the place I felt at rest. I remember when I started to understand that the Church is my home. It is a place where I belong, where I am delighted in, where I find refuge and strength. Church is where the Father calls me out of the crazy busyness of life to sit in His embrace, to hear Him calling me His beloved, His beautiful one, His daughter.

There were, and are, and will always be times when I play the rebellious daughter and stray from the home of that embrace, preferring the comfortable ease and “rest” that comes from floating in the current of the secular culture. But the reality is, that is not real rest. The culture offers a rest that brings about complacency and stagnancy. The Father offers a rest that comes with blessing and joy.

Mercifully, we have a Father in Heaven who never ceases waiting for us at the gate, to welcome us back into His embrace, to our true and lasting home. He does not tire of calling us daughter, no matter where we have been.

Sister, when is the last time you let the Father call you His daughter, let Him enfold you in His merciful love, let Him speak the truth of who you are in His eyes to the little girl heart within you? When is the last time you were at home with the Father? When did you last experience the rest of the Father’s delight in you?

Whether it was years ago, months ago, or yesterday, take a moment today and hear Him speak these words over you: “Welcome, my daughter…welcome to your home with blessing and joy. Come in, daughter!” (Tobit 11:17)

Let these words delight your heart, dear sister, because they are true. With Him, you are always welcome; there is always blessing and joy. With Him, you are always home!