Many years ago I remember sitting near the radio listening intently to A Prairie Home Companion. Garrison Keillor’s soft, soothing voice told of his childhood days in Lake Woebegone  and their yearly assignment of their "storm home". Their storm home was the place the children who lived in the country would go if the weather became too dangerous to go home. It was a beautiful story of the home each of us longs for not only during storms but every day. The light was on in the window in anticipation of our arrival. As the door was opened, we are welcomed in with joy. The fire is glowing warmly in the fireplace, delicious aromas float in the air….a promise of all our favorite comfort foods. After dinner, a bed stacked high with cozy warm blankets is waiting and we are tucked in with love, a good story and a prayer.

I thought of this story yesterday as the snow was flying, the wind was blowing and travel became more and more treacherous. Of course, Garrison’s storm home is a fantasy created in his magnificent imagination. But it represents for each of us that iconic vision of home….that place where we will be safe, fed, warm, sheltered….but most of all welcomed unconditionally. It is an ideal for the majority of the world. We know that each day children are not welcomed into places of safety, adults are not well fed or held in loving care, and more people than we can imagine go to bed hungry and without anyone to tuck them in.

But that fact doesn’t keep us from hoping,praying, longing for a storm home for all those people….and ourselves. These prayers of compassion, followed by action of some kind can and do make a difference,I believe, perhaps not in the larger system but in individual lives. Each time we make a donation, take food to the emergency food shelf, volunteer at a shelter we create a form of storm home for someone.

In a few weeks we will hear once again the story of the Prodigal Son. This story, I believe, holds so much of our faith story and our spiritual struggle. It holds the anticipation of personal freedom, a call to responsible living, our self-centeredness, our desire for adventure, the ability to get it right and at the same time oh-so-wrong. It tells of our selfishness and our creativity, our connection and desire to want to be "loved best". We could spend a whole year on this story and still be mining God’s wisdom.

But above all this story tells us that no matter what, no matter where, no matter how, no matter why, The Holy One is always present…..with the light on, the meal prepared, arms outstretched, welcoming us with joy and unconditional love to our storm home. "Will you, God, really live with people on earth? Why, the heavens and their own heavens cannot contain you. How much less this house that I have built…Listen to the cry and the prayer I make to you today, day and night let your eyes watch over this house, over this place of which you have said:My name shall be there."(1 Kings 8:27-29)

Have a warm and safe weekend….and remember to leave the light on. Someone may be coming home.