Home Is.....

Home Is......

Lord, through all the generations
you have been our home!
2
Before the mountains were born,
before you gave birth to the earth and the world,
from beginning to end, you are God. Psalm 90:1-2

This week, after 11 years, I moved from the place that had been my home. Besides being special and cherished by me, it was a miracle gift from the Father. I never should have been able to get it, as on paper, I would have been the poorest of risks for any lender. Yet I did get it, and without any real personal involvement from me in any of the process. Over the ensuing 11 years, it became the first real home I'd known since leaving the one I grew up in 35 years before. Now, here I am in a new home in the city of Lynchburg, Virginia. A home also given to me by Him. For both my previous home, and this new one, I am overflowing with gratitude to a good and wonderful Father who provided both, but there is something deeper than all that which I've discovered.

The old folk saying goes, "Home is where the heart is." I think it was Augustine who said something to the effect that "our hearts are restless until they find their home in Him." In these latter years of my life, the truth of these have become more real to me than ever before, and more real than I could ever have expected.

As I said, I cherished that home in Manassas, Virginia. I experienced His joy, peace, and contentment while I lived there, but when I left it, I did not leave that joy, peace and contentment behind. I was able to let it go because that lovely place was never really my home. Not anymore than the one I now sit in is. Buildings made of brick and mortar, wood and vinyl, may offer much to the natural eye, but they are temporary dwelling places. We weren't created to abide in them. We were created to abide in Him. Abraham wandered through his world living in tents, and he was content to do so because his God was his dwelling place. His place was in Him, not in the spot where he drove his tent pegs into the ground. He was always able to move on because he was always both moving with, and deeper into Him. It is to be so with all who call Him their God and Father. Jesus said that He had no place on earth to "lay His head," but He did in the Kingdom. He did in His Father God.

It's so easy to get ensnared in the things and trappings of this world. So much so that we cannot bear to leave or lose them. Too many of us are more reluctant to leave this realm than we are to enter into the fullness of His. We're more familiar with our earthly dwelling places that we are heavenly one. In that sense, we're all "prodigals," living far from the Father, and not realizing that when we've made this our home and not Him, we, like the prodigal son, dwell in a hog pen, no matter how richly we may have decorated it.

There was a point where the son realized his yearning for home, and he began to move back towards it. As he did so, his father, who was watching for him, saw him coming and ran to meet him, taking him into his arms in an embrace filled with his love. In what way is God the Father doing so with you and me? What and where have we made dwelling places that are not Him, that we cling to far more tightly than we do to Him? These places are not our home. They are not what we're created for. Paul considered the riches of this world trash and waste in comparison with the infinite joy of knowing and having Him. Do we know the truth of that as well, or has the waste of this world blinded us to the riches of His?

The Father sees where we're at. He stands and His heart calls out to us. Do we hear? Do we leave our worldly hovels that we might come to the "mansion" of His heart? He's the Home we were made for. While we walk to Him, He runs to us. Get caught up in His embrace. Home is where the heart is. May your heart find its home in Him.

Blessings,
Pastor O