Many, many years ago, on a Saturday afternoon, I sat myself down in front of our old black and white TV and watched a movie that remains as vivid today as it did back then. The movie was "The Snake Pit" and it starred Olivia DeHaviland as a woman sent to a hospital for the insane. As the title implies, this hospital was more of a vicious prison than a comfortable hospice of rest and restoration.

Of all the powerful images that I recall from this film, one particular scene stands out. Olivia had finally won her release and was bidding goodbye to the rather bizarre collection of friends she had made within this snake pit. As she moved among these women that she had grown to love, they began singing, ever so quietly, a beautiful song. It was an old spiritual, a song whose melody has often made its reappearance on the edge of my soul during the intervening forty odd years.

Later in my life, I discovered that Antonin Dvorak had incorporated that same song into his New World Symphony but on that particular long ago day, I sat entranced before the TV and listened as those poor people gently sang, "Going home. Going home. We are going home."

I have seen hundreds, maybe even thousands of movies since that day but that scene remains as one of the most powerful.

In the fall of 1963, I encountered that same haunting melody in a very different setting, a setting just as bizarre as that insane asylum from the movie...only this was no illusion. This was the funeral procession for our president. As I watched the carriage roll by with its tragically lifeless passenger, I heard that song again soulfully played by the Marine Corps Band and the words from the movie came back to me, "Going home. Going home. We are going home."

Now whenever I hear the largo movement from The New World, those images and others come flooding over me. I am moved by the music because it seems to have encapsulated for me all the joys and sorrows, all the successes and failures, all the good and evil that this life can bring.

I think of that wonderful little tale that Jesus told of the wayward son who wants to return home. A boy who discovers that a life without love is meaningless. "Going home. Going home. We are going home."

Jesus shared that poignant and terribly true story to underscore his conviction that God remains steadfast. Even though our own faith may waver, even though hope may seem lost, God’s faithfulness never diminishes. God’s hopefilledness never ends.

Going home. That old black spiritual is, in many ways, an apt description of our journey of faith. It portrays an image of comfort and of loss, of hope and of failure, of love. Most importantly, it proclaims its conviction that there is no trouble so big, no sorrow so deep, no loss so great that God will not share it with us. God, like the lovely symbol of a gracious father, stands waiting for us with open arms, waiting as we begin our journey of faith, waiting as we begin going home.