The Terrible State Of Homelessness

The State of Homeless In America, 2012 report, issued by the National Alliance To End Homelessness, reported that 643,067 people experienced homelessness in the United States on a given night in 2011. Homelessness is indeed a terrible state for anyone, but especially for women and children. In the richest country the world has ever known, there shouldn't be such a thing as homelessness, but there is.

Spiritually speaking, the state of homelessness illustrates the human condition without God.

The Bible tells us: "All we like sheep have gone astray; We have turned, every one, to his own way" (Isaiah 53:6). To deny God, as so many people do today, is to be homeless in a world He designed for His own glory (Psalm 19:1; cf. Isaiah 40:22). To abandon His moral law, is to drift aimlessly like a ship without a rudder. To deny Him, is to make life meaningless. To refuse His love and offer of salvation through Christ, is to sink into the coldness of despair (Ephesians 2:12).

The answer to the human dilemma of spiritual homelessness, is to believe in and to obey the saving gospel of Jesus Christ (Romans 10:17; Romans 6:17). Early Latin theologian, Augustine (354-430), once observed the following regarding God: "Thou hast made us for Thyself, and the heart of man is restless until it finds its rest in Thee."

To obey the Lord Jesus, is to come into the warm and loving family of God (John 1:12; cf. Romans 8:14-17; Gal. 3:26-29). To hope in Him, is to look forward to a heavenly home that will last forever (John 14:1-3; 1 Peter 1:3-4).

Are we feeling homeless, spiritually speaking? Let us be willing to come home to our heavenly Father (Luke 15:11-24).

—Mike Riley, Gospel Snippets