My wife and I were calling the other day on a young woman whose husband had been three years overseas. We sat on the porch while she was preparing some tea for us in the kitchen. We saw a young man in uniform walk toward the house and stop at the gate.

For a long moment he looked up at the house, then came up the steps, paid no attention to us, and walked in the door. He quietly set his duffle bag down and listened to the rattle of cups in the kitchen. Then he whistled softly an old tune, and the noise in the kitchen stopped. Then we heard her moving toward him in the hall. There they stood a few feet apart, their hands touching. No words were spoken, but all that two people could say with their eyes was said. He cleared his throat, then slowly reached down into his duffle bag and brought out a box. With superb calmness, he said, "Darlin', here's the candy I went out to get for you." Her eyes were filled with happiness, framed in a crystal circle of tears.

But when she spoke, her calmness matched his. "Thank you, dear, but I think you. were a long time getting it." Then they were in each others arms, and we tiptoed out the gate.

I have always been glad that the great words of our faith are family words ... Father, Son, Love, Home. Our lives are richly blended in other lives. And out of these human ties come both our laughter and our tears. This foolish boy (prodigal son)of the parable left home seeking happiness in independence from human ties, only to discover that the soul cannot make its own music and that real joy is not in renunciation but in reunion.

Here too is the trumpet note of Resurrection-reunion, glad reunion with those loved long since and lost a while, reunion on a higher level. "Then were the disciples glad when they saw the Lord." He had come back to them, to the same Christ. Yet he was not the same. How the questions swarm around that You and I cannot picture a Resurrection or visualize a Resurrection body. But what is the difference?