Home Sweet Home

How lovely is your dwelling place, Lord Almighty! My soul yearns, even faints, for the courts of the Lord; my heart and my flesh cry out for the living God. Even the sparrow has found a home, and the swallow a nest for herself, where she may have her young— a place near your altar, Lord Almighty, my King and my God. Blessed are those who dwell in your house; they are ever praising you.” [Psalm 84:1-4]

Home Sweet Home…isn’t that what people usually say? Well, after thirty-eight years, I am returning to the land of my birth -- England. What an overwhelming sense of joy, sadness and bittersweet memories; to hug loved-ones and just loving the very sense of “being home.” After all these years; I know the people and places have changed; but as it says in the Bible -- things may change, but the Word of God never changes. He is the same yesterday, today and forever.

Our homes, in almost every case, wherever it is, warms our heart, and, especially when we are separated from it, our hearts yearn for home. It is a delight to return home in one fashion or another, even for those who do not or know not how to express their sense of warmth and joy in “coming home.” Every human being yearns for home or a home that is theirs! The Psalmist captures the longing of the soul for home, and acknowledges the place of the soul’s bottom-line yearning: the home where God dwells. This yearning is what drives the essentially spiritual soul of every human being; even the atheists who denies the existence of any gods, yearns for what drives their very being, though they do not, and refuses to, understand it.

All of us are always on our way home, even though the intermediate experience of coming home is a real but temporary joy. In the believer, whose vision of the future is framed by faith, the intermediate joys of coming home are intended to whet our appetites for the courts of the living God, and the Savior’s presence, who died for us. Eternal life should not be feared as an unearthly place of “who knows what,” but rather a “coming home” to what we have always yearned, even ached, to see and be. This is why God gives us homes, and the feelings that accompany “coming home” today, that we may with the Psalmist yearn for our home in the dwelling place of God.

Faith Step:
Do not let another experience of “coming home” and the feelings that accompany it go by without exercising faith to acknowledge your real home, anticipating it with increasing, desiring joy. Such an exercise of your faith will enlighten and create a picture acquainted with reality, which the Bible reveals to its faithful reader, that God’s dwelling place, His home, is our home, the place that exceeds every joy and sense of well-being and safety that we have ever felt in ”coming home” to our temporary home on this present earth.
So, let us not waste the joys of “coming home” to the here and now! Use them by faith for the anticipation of what awaits us in the future, certainty of our true home, sweet home.

Let us Pray:
O God, we long to be in Your presence, to be near Your altar, and to find our home in Your heart. Just like the psalmist said, “Better is one day in your courts than a thousand elsewhere.” We long to be close to You, to dwell in Your house and feel Your grace surrounding us. Help us to walk in Your ways and follow Your teachings, seeking Your strength and direction each day. May we come to know You better with every passing day, and we pray that Your abundant blessings will pour down on all that trust Your name and abide in Your love. In Jesus’ Name we pray, Amen!

Written by Donnis Prass