This song was written by Irwin Levine and Larry Brown (credited as L. Russell Brown), who wrote the previous #1 hit for the group, "Knock Three Times." The song is based on a story called "Going Home" that Levine read in the January 1972 edition of the magazine Reader's Digest. The story was originally published in the New York Post on October 14, 1971, appearing in a column called "The Eight Million" written by Pete Hamill.
In the story, six kids riding a bus from New York to Fort Lauderdale strike up a conversation with a man named Vingo, who tells them he was just released from prison after four years in jail. He told his wife, Martha, that she could start a new life without him, and for the last three-and-a-half years of his incarceration, he didn't hear from her. In his last letter to her, he gave her instructions. The story reads:
We used to live in this town, Brunswick, just before Jacksonville, and there's a big oak tree just as you come into town, a very famous tree, huge. I told her that if she'd take me back, she should put a yellow ribbon on the tree and I'd get off and come home. If she didn't want me, forget it - no ribbon and I'd go through.
Everyone on the bus kept a lookout for the tree, and when they arrived, there were lots of ribbons tied to an oak tree, that the leaves of the tree are almost covered fully in yellow.
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In the same way, this is how God responds to His people who decides to return to Him. He gladly take us back with arms wide open, no judgment and grievances. Oh, how he loves us!