Pastor’s Corner: “Home Sweet Home”
Psalm 90:1 (NLT) – 1 Lord, through all the generations you have been our home!
I read an account of a psychology professor who had his class participate in a test. The test was that each student in his or her mind was asked to envision a journey along a path. Each student was told to create their own details of the journey. At the last part of the path was a wall, where they were told to write down what that wall looked like and how they got to the other side of it. They then shared some of their differing details out loud. At the end, the professor explained each detail about the wall and what getting to the other side of it represented in their life.
When it came to the wall, some classmates saw a large concrete wall with barbed wire or a brick wall that they had to scale and struggle to get over. The professor called on one young man and asked him what his wall looked like. His answer was very different from the others in the class. His wall was the wall of a home, and to get to the other side, he simply opened the door and walked in. The professor looked at him for a moment, and said, “Interesting.” According to the professor, the wall represented their view on death, and how you get to the other side represented the amount of fear one has in facing death.
The professor may not have understood the young man’s answer that day, but for a Christian, the end of this life means going home to heaven – Home Sweet Home! We don’t need to be afraid of the afterlife or dying or what comes next, for we have the promises of Jesus in our life. It is not a struggle to get to the other side of the wall because Jesus is the door and the access to our Home with the Father. We have been given the mercy and grace of a Savior who died for us all so that we may have eternal life.
While we need not fear death as Christians, more than this I believe that we have access to our Home right now because our home is not a place but a person! Psalm 90:1 (NLT) – 1 Lord, through all the generations you have been our home! It’s a beautiful line. But it makes even more of an impression when you read that Moses wrote this song of praise as Israel’s leader during the forty years they wandered as nomads in the desert. They had no permanent home! And yet he begins this song of worship by saying, GOD YOU ARE OUR HOME.
God has been the home of humans ever since they have been on the earth. In all generations, God is where they continually live. You will recognize that this is the same truth Paul uttered when he addressed the Athenians on Mars Hill. He explained to them that God is not far from any of us (even pagans, he points out), for in him we live and move and have our being (Acts 17:28).God exists as a home for people. Home is not a physical place, but where our hearts are.
Have our hearts found that place of Sabbath rest in Him who is our true home? He is seeking us; are we seeking Him? That’s what I seek: to know in a deep sense that I am home in God no matter what the day holds, or what tomorrow will bring. Peace… Home…. I am safe with God, secure in God, loved by God, delighted over, and invited into wholeness. That feels like a homecoming to me!
In life and in death, we belong to God. In life and in death, we are at home in God. But the reverse is also true. God wants to be at home in us. God wants to abide in us. Will you open the door of your heart to Him today?
In His Grace
Pastor Hamilton