2 Corinthians 5: 1-10
Today was a harder day. I was exhausted most of the day and tiredness usually leads to days where the sadness just hits harder. So, I found myself thinking of home. Not my home here, but my home there. And oh how I long and groan to be at home with the Lord. Death has a way of awakening the groan, awakening the longing for our true home.
I laid down on our couch, trying to take a little nap, and of course Dasah decided it was time for her daily kickboxing class (I wish she’d consult me first about her class schedule). So, I put my hand on my belly, foregoing any attempt at sleep to simply cherish these moments of resting with my little girl in our earthly home, our earthly bodies, desperately praying that I’ll get more time with her here in this earthly body. And I thought of Sophie, her earthly home destroyed… she, away from her body but at home with the Lord, having put on her heavenly dwelling. Soon, half our little family may be at home with the Lord and here, Kevin and I will be, still in our earthly tents awaiting, all the more eagerly the day when we too will be absent from our bodies and at home with the Lord.
Yet, the hope. The hope is that though our bodies may be destroyed here, it just means we’ll be alive there… “so that what is mortal may be swallowed up by life” (2 Cor. 5:4).
With the Lord… eternally HOME.
The word “Home” decorates our dining room and I feel a little prick every time I see it. It just doesn’t tell the full story. So I keep wanting to add a couple small words to the beginning and the end…
Our
HOME
is heaven.
Our home is not here. As much as I want to make this home of ours a refuge, decorating all the little spaces, making it ours with the memories and people that fill it, it will never be truly home. One, because it’s a rental. Two, because Sophie, our firstborn is not here and that creates a void. Three, because this home was never intended to be my HOME.
Like Abraham and countless other men and women of the faith, we are sojourners in a strange land. We are looking forward to the city that has foundations, whose designer and builder is God (Hebrews 11: 10). This isn’t our home. And for a believer, part of the beauty that comes out of loss, displacement, loneliness is the deep longing for our true home. We may not realize in those moments that is what is being awakened, what our soul is actually burdened for, groaning for, longing for, but it’s happening. And it’s happening for us in this season of great loss and uncertainty. I do not wish our story on anyone. BUT, I do wish that in our western culture we would stop allowing the pursuit of pleasure, ease, comfort (the “american dream”) to keep our longings for building a home here hot and our longings for our home in heaven cold. Yes, I wish that more believers in our western culture would experience the stripping of the things that keep us attached to this world.
We are too attached to this world.
I am too attached to this world.
So I pray that we would truly experience the longing for our heavenly home in the way Paul speaks of, whatever it takes. That we would have such perspective, that we too would be of good courage BECAUSE we walk by faith and not by sight. Faith that one day, we too will be at home with the Lord. SO, even though we would rather be at home with the Lord, whether we are at home or away, we make it our aim to please him. That our focus on eternity would affect more deeply the way we live, the things we value here, and the ONE we choose to honor with our lives.
Home is not how our western culture defines it.
And Home, as God defines it, is much more, so much more than what our hearts can comprehend.
Questions for Reflection:
- What is the “tent” or “earthly home” that Paul is referring too?
- Why is there hope even if that tent is destroyed?
- Do you long more to be at home in the body, or at home with the Lord?
- Where are you making your home?
Tomorrow’s Passage (Day 15)
2 Corinthians 5: 11-6:18
- A Time to be Silent and a Time to Speak - October 29, 2020
- Teaching Them to Hope, Birthday After Birthday. - January 15, 2020
- A Taste of Hope Fulfilled – Briella Dawn’s Birth Story - August 3, 2018
