How lovely is Your dwelling place, O Lord of hosts! My soul longs, yes, faints for the courts of the Lord. My heart and flesh sing for joy to the living God. (Verses 1-2)
Let not your hearts be troubled, believe in God, believe also in Me. In my Father's house are many mansions. If it were not so, would I have told you that I go and prepare a place for you? Jesus. John 14
Home. It's where the lights are on when you drive up. Where the smell of food wafts from the kitchen to your nostrils when you open the door after a long day of work. I remember when I was a kid driving up the driveway to our house after a late afternoon Brownie meeting and seeing my mother through the picture window as she stirred something over the stove. The early evening pinkness of the skies as the sun disappeared for the day drenched the rooftop in metallic sparkles. The light was on over the stove. I could smell the bacon frying. Hoped we were having baked potatoes with onions, butter, cheese and...that bacon.
Of course, later, home was where Bill and my children are. I, in charge of dinner--of rounding us all up at the end of the day to chatter excitedly about our lives. To laugh or cry or, sometimes, argue. (I'm not going to lie here. If you know my kids, you know we argued every meal.) Prayed over, tucked into bed, walked with, celebrated with and counseled. My kids know when they walk in the door these days, when they are grown and often far flung, they have entered the safety zone where they are completely loved, free to argue and eat, to cry and laugh. And perhaps even to be challenged. Home.
Maybe that's why at dinner the night He was betrayed, Jesus promised home to his disciples. He'd just redressed after having taken off His outer garments in order to kneel at the feet of each disciple to cleanse them from the dirt of the day's journey. Intimate in its vulnerability, the foot washing was the last time He'd touch them before His death. Judas, the betrayer of Jesus, slipped from the room, leaving the Son with the eleven. "I am going away someplace you can't follow right now,"Jesus said. "Love each other, guys. Love each other. I command it."
Peter, appalled, demanded to know, "Where are You going?"
"Where I'm going you can't follow now, but you will later." Then Jesus told them about home. He was going home. Where His Father and ours waits amidst the many mansions for His children to appear. "The Father Himself loves you because you have loved me," Jesus assures them in this intimate last conversation with His beloved friends. And perhaps their hearts understood the strange homesickness always stirring in them. Whenever the sunset blazed in glory setting the Jerusalem skies on fire. Or when their son or daughter, fresh from the womb, grabbed with the exuberance of new life a proffered finger and squeezed its newborn wonder round the circumference. Maybe when the Torah was read, God at once powerful and beautiful. Conjuring up in them the knowledge we are made for more. We don't live where we came from. And we will be going back there someday, too.
How lovely must that dwelling place be! And He carried me away in the Spirit to a great, high mountain, and showed me the holy city Jerusalem coming down out of heaven from God, having the glory of God, its radiance like a most rare jewel, like a jasper, clear as crystal. It had a great, high wall, with twelve gates, and at the gates were twelve angels...the wall was built of jasper, while the city was pure gold, clear as glass. The foundations of the wall of the city were adorned with every kind of jewel...and the streets of the city were pure gold, clear as glass. (Revelation 21) Pretty fancy. Over the top. Jesus lives now in the splendor He promises us.
But we all know a house without love, no matter how magnificent, is not home. Home is where family is. Behold, the dwelling place of God is with man. He will dwell with mankind and they will be His people, and God Himself will be with them as their God. (Revelation 21) For those of us who know His Son, believe Him to be our Savior, our Jesus becomes our brother Who will one day open the door to the Father's house and bid us come in. How lovely, how unfathomably lovely, is that, our home. For He is there, and that is all that matters.
Precious to the Lord is the death of His faithful ones. Psalm 116:15
Let not your hearts be troubled, believe in God, believe also in Me. In my Father's house are many mansions. If it were not so, would I have told you that I go and prepare a place for you? Jesus. John 14
Home. It's where the lights are on when you drive up. Where the smell of food wafts from the kitchen to your nostrils when you open the door after a long day of work. I remember when I was a kid driving up the driveway to our house after a late afternoon Brownie meeting and seeing my mother through the picture window as she stirred something over the stove. The early evening pinkness of the skies as the sun disappeared for the day drenched the rooftop in metallic sparkles. The light was on over the stove. I could smell the bacon frying. Hoped we were having baked potatoes with onions, butter, cheese and...that bacon.
Of course, later, home was where Bill and my children are. I, in charge of dinner--of rounding us all up at the end of the day to chatter excitedly about our lives. To laugh or cry or, sometimes, argue. (I'm not going to lie here. If you know my kids, you know we argued every meal.) Prayed over, tucked into bed, walked with, celebrated with and counseled. My kids know when they walk in the door these days, when they are grown and often far flung, they have entered the safety zone where they are completely loved, free to argue and eat, to cry and laugh. And perhaps even to be challenged. Home.
Maybe that's why at dinner the night He was betrayed, Jesus promised home to his disciples. He'd just redressed after having taken off His outer garments in order to kneel at the feet of each disciple to cleanse them from the dirt of the day's journey. Intimate in its vulnerability, the foot washing was the last time He'd touch them before His death. Judas, the betrayer of Jesus, slipped from the room, leaving the Son with the eleven. "I am going away someplace you can't follow right now,"Jesus said. "Love each other, guys. Love each other. I command it."
Peter, appalled, demanded to know, "Where are You going?"
"Where I'm going you can't follow now, but you will later." Then Jesus told them about home. He was going home. Where His Father and ours waits amidst the many mansions for His children to appear. "The Father Himself loves you because you have loved me," Jesus assures them in this intimate last conversation with His beloved friends. And perhaps their hearts understood the strange homesickness always stirring in them. Whenever the sunset blazed in glory setting the Jerusalem skies on fire. Or when their son or daughter, fresh from the womb, grabbed with the exuberance of new life a proffered finger and squeezed its newborn wonder round the circumference. Maybe when the Torah was read, God at once powerful and beautiful. Conjuring up in them the knowledge we are made for more. We don't live where we came from. And we will be going back there someday, too.
How lovely must that dwelling place be! And He carried me away in the Spirit to a great, high mountain, and showed me the holy city Jerusalem coming down out of heaven from God, having the glory of God, its radiance like a most rare jewel, like a jasper, clear as crystal. It had a great, high wall, with twelve gates, and at the gates were twelve angels...the wall was built of jasper, while the city was pure gold, clear as glass. The foundations of the wall of the city were adorned with every kind of jewel...and the streets of the city were pure gold, clear as glass. (Revelation 21) Pretty fancy. Over the top. Jesus lives now in the splendor He promises us.
But we all know a house without love, no matter how magnificent, is not home. Home is where family is. Behold, the dwelling place of God is with man. He will dwell with mankind and they will be His people, and God Himself will be with them as their God. (Revelation 21) For those of us who know His Son, believe Him to be our Savior, our Jesus becomes our brother Who will one day open the door to the Father's house and bid us come in. How lovely, how unfathomably lovely, is that, our home. For He is there, and that is all that matters.
Precious to the Lord is the death of His faithful ones. Psalm 116:15
No comments:
Post a Comment