The Ragamuffin Gospel: Good News for the Bedraggled, Beat-Up, and Burnt Out

by Brennan Manning

Jesus says simply, “Remain in me, as I in you” (John 15:4). Home is not a heavenly mansion in the afterlife but a safe place right in the midst of our anxious world. “Anyone who loves me will keep my word, and my Father will love him, and we shall come to him and make a home in him” (John 14:23). Home is that sacred space—external or internal—where we don’t have to be afraid; where we are confident of hospitality and love. In our society we have many homeless people sleeping not only on the streets, in shelters or in welfare hotels, but vagabonds who are in flight, who never come home to themselves. They seek a safe place through alcohol or drugs or security in success, competence, friends, pleasure, notoriety, knowledge, or even a little religion. They have become strangers to themselves, people who have an address but are never at home, who never hear the voice of love or experience the freedom of God’s children.