Ready to Go Home

Considering that my Thanksgiving break begins Wednesday afternoon, I suppose this post could be about going home to visit my family and it's true, I can't wait to get there. This is one of those times when I intensely feel my need to see my family and to bask in their love. But, as excited as I am about Thanksgiving break, that isn't what is on my mind. I'm thinking of Home, the eternal Home of the believer, and I'm ready to go. Events of the past several months or maybe even the past year and a half have more than ever made it painfully clear to me how broken our world is, how broken all of us are. Thinking of brokenness leads me to think of Heaven where all the wrong in the world is gone--the no more tears, no more disease, no more pain, no more sin, no more night of Revelation. And yes, all the evil in the world will be absent in Heaven but lately I've been thinking not just of what won't be there but what will be true in a perfect eternity. I'm ready to go Home. Home where the oceans and the winds will never hold any terror just the sheer delight of their beauty and power. Home where we can forever fellowship with those dear to our hearts. Home where our joy in the pleasures of life will never be stained with the fear of losing them. Home where our best efforts to understand each other will never be thwarted by our sin-clouded minds and all our relationships will continue forever in perfect harmony. Home where nothing that is good ever has to come to an end because there is no end. Home where we will not tire and no talk has to end from the necessity of sleep. Home where the deepest struggles of all our hearts will be healed permanently never to drag us down again and we can love and live in utter freedom. Home where we will never fear being hurt by or hurting another and the Family of God can forever fellowship in unity and understanding. Home where the children who never had a real daddy will be forever fathered by the Eternal Abba. Home where grace will always reign and agape love will overflow. Home where our halting attempts toward sanctification will be swept up by the final redemption of all we are and have been. Home where the walls we build to protect ourselves will crumble to dust at our feet. Home where we will finally be truly as God made us to be. Home where there will be no more goodbyes only an eternal now. Home where our relationship with the Father and Jesus will be utterly unihibited by our doubting, fretting hearts. My heart longs for the final redemption, for all the brokenness put to rights, for the thrill of life and relationships and beauty as they were divinely intended before the scars of the Fall. Over the past while I've fought hard in the face of circumstances, bewildering situations, and the doubts of some close to my heart to keep my faith. And, I find myself thinking of C.S. Lewis' idea that the perfection and timelessness that we long for are signs of the truth of God and Heaven and His divine story, a clear signal that we were not made for this world. The longing for redemption that burns within me is the sign that God is real and there is a redeemed and perfect place I truly belong. For now, we are far from Home, seeing only the remnants of Eden and the scraps of God's image left within the broken, scarred hearts of mankind but one day, one day soon, the children of God will go Home. Let that hope burn in your hearts and flame in your lives. Maranatha!