He Came Home and Does Not Know Why

Ikaika came back in March after eleven years and everybody was pleased and nobody has asked him the actual question.

The actual question is what he came back for.

He would not be able to answer it. He has tried. He has a job, which is fine, and a place, which is fine, and a family who are glad, which is more than fine. He goes to the water most mornings. He knows every road. He is, in the plainest sense, home.

And there is no reason. He did not come back for a job. He did not come back for a person. There was no crisis and nothing collapsed. He was over there in a life that was working, and then he was not, and then he was here.

What ended over there was an arrangement he had been inside for most of the eleven years, and how it ended is not this article's business except to say that it ended, and about six weeks later he booked a flight, and he could not have explained the six weeks to anybody.

Here is what he is afraid of.

He is afraid that the answer to what did you come back for is nothing. That he did not come toward anything. That he simply left, twice, eleven years apart, and this second one just happens to have landed him where he started.

Here is the evening it caught.

His aunt, at a table, said, "It is good to have you back."

And Ikaika said, "It is good to be back."

And she said, "What made you come?"

And he said, "It was time," which is a sentence that means nothing at all, and she nodded, and that was the end of it.

You know that. You made a large move, and there is a version of the story you tell people that is smooth and true and does not answer the question, and underneath it is a fear that there was no destination and you were only leaving.

A title rather than a promise

Let me put down what I am not doing tonight, so you can stop bracing.

I am not going to tell you why you came back. I do not know and neither does anybody else who has not lived your eleven years. I am not going to tell you what God is doing here, because I do not know it and inventing a purpose for a man's move is one of the cheaper things a page can do.

What I will do is read you a sentence where God gives Himself a name.

Thus saith the LORD, thy Redeemer, the Holy One of Israel; I am the LORD thy God which teacheth thee to profit, which leadeth thee by the way that thou shouldest go.Isaiah 48:17

Look at the shape of that. I am the LORD thy God which leadeth thee by the way that thou shouldest go.

That is a title, not a promise. He is not saying: I will lead you if certain conditions are met. He is naming leading as a thing He is, in the same list as Redeemer and Holy One of Israel.

A title is not conditional and it is not intermittent. A judge is a judge when court is closed. And this verse puts the leading of a person by the right road into the same category.

You are being led by somebody for whom leading is an identity rather than an occasional activity. Isaiah 48:17 lists it as a name alongside Redeemer, and the Holy Spirit is the one who carries that off the page and onto a road a man knows every inch of.

And notice who is not in that sentence. The person being led is not described as having understood anything, agreed to anything, or been able to give an account of the route.

You have never been asked to be able to describe the road in order to have been on it, and the verse makes the leading His and the going yours and stops there. It is written that He leads by the way a person should go, and the Holy Spirit is what makes an ancient title a present fact.

Leaving and arriving can be the same move

Now let me be careful, because this is where somebody gets hurt.

The fear underneath Ikaika's smooth sentence is a real one and it deserves a straight answer: is it possible that he only left, and the arriving is an accident?

Here is the straight answer. Leaving and arriving are frequently the same movement, and nobody can tell which it was from inside the first year.

Abraham left Ur. Ruth left Moab. The exodus is a departure for the whole first half of the book and a destination for the second, and at no point does anybody in it know which part they are in.

You are not required to know whether this was a leaving or an arriving, and Scripture is full of people who could not have told you either. Genesis 12:1 has a man leaving three things before he is told where he is going, and the Holy Spirit is what makes an ambiguous move survivable rather than shameful.

And I want to name the six weeks, because they matter more than the flight.

Six weeks between an arrangement ending and a man booking a ticket home is not nothing, and it is not a whim. That is a person sitting with something. He could not explain it then and he cannot explain it now, and the inability to explain it does not mean nothing was happening.

You were being led during a stretch you cannot account for, and the account was never part of what was asked of you. Isaiah 48:17 places all the leading on God's side of the sentence, and the Holy Spirit is the one who does the leading whether or not the person can narrate it.

Say this here rather than at the end, because I would rather say it and not be needed. If the months since March have gone somewhere heavier than aimless, or if the fear that you came back to nothing has become most of the evening, do not sit with that alone. Tell somebody this week. Your aunt, a friend, your doctor, a counselor, or the 988 crisis line if you live in the United States. That is not me telling you a thing about the eleven years. That is me refusing to leave you at that table by yourself.