Friday, July 13, 2012

if home's where my heart is, then i'm out of place

"If I find in myself desires which nothing in this world can satisfy, 
the only logical explanation is that I was made for another world."
CS Lewis

"But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ. 
So then you are no longer strangers and aliens, 
but you are fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God"
Ephesians 2:13,19

"But our citizenship is in heaven, and from it we await a Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ"
Philippians 3:20


I'm homesick. Not for Tennessee (although I think about it a lot), but for Heaven. For HOME. For a place with no imperfections. No pride. No jealousy. No insecurity. No uncertainties. No pain. No questions. Just Jesus. I want to be there.

Moving stretched me. It still does everyday. I love living in Georgia. If for no other reason (and there are TONS), I love living here because I believe God called me here. He orchestrated the events that led to me being here. He's still orchestrating the events of my every day.

But sometimes I ache for familiarity. For people who know my history and have lived it with me. For a place where I know where everything is and how to get there and how to tell you how to get there too. For songs that I know all the words and notes and rhythms to. For food that came from the woods and the garden that I walk through barefoot while the sun goes down. For the smell of tomatoes and cucumbers and okra and potatoes and just good dirt. For miniature iron skillets and homemade biscuits and headlamps and tractors and getting up before the sun to go hunting and staying up later than the moon to go frog gigging and fox calling. For sleeping less and feeling more. For family and blood ties and puzzles and heat lightning. For lemonade in jars and haunted attics and wrap around porches. For memories. For family. My heart aches to return. And sometimes I do. But it's never the same. Not like I remember. Things changed. Life happened. Home is different. I'm different. Everyone else is too. The originals are gone and new ones have joined us. Sometimes I grieve over the changes, and sometimes I rejoice. Don't you do that sometimes too? Grieve for the past and rejoice in the now?

If I miss all of those things that much, I miss Heaven more. That might not make sense to you because I've never been there. But the Bible says my citizenship is in Heaven because I have been adopted into the family of God. I miss my earthly family, but I miss my Heavenly family more. I ache for rest and for a place of no striving...a place of just being with Jesus. If my experiences of growing up in a family that loves me is a glimpse of what it's like to be in Heaven, then I cannot wait to go.

Of course, I will stay here until God calls me Home. And I will try to seek His will for my time here. If He had no purpose for me, I'd already be Home. The same is true for you. He has a plan for you. If you're still here, He's not finished with you. Let's not waste the time that we have because it's not very much.

"Come now, you who say, 'Today or tomorrow we will go into such and such a town and spend a year there and trade and make a profit'--yet you do not know what tomorrow will bring. 
What is your life? For you are a mist that appears for a little time and then vanishes."
James 4:13-14

No comments:

Post a Comment