We are all headed home.  After work, we head home.  After vacation, we head home. After traveling to see relatives, we head home.  After a grocery store visit, we head home. After a semester at college, we head home.  My wife always calls and lets me know when she is headed home whether it is after a doctor’s visit, or a work conference or a day of errands etc.  I love how she says “Hey honey! I’m on the way H-O-M-E.” Her deep southern accent makes that word “home” resonate even after I have hung up the phone. I then look out the window anticipating her arrival, like when I waited for her to walk down the aisle so we could start a life together by creating a home for our family.  Reminds me of Don Henley’s song Taking You Home: “And this love is like nothing I have ever known. Take my hand, love. I’m taking you home.”

After living this life we also head…home and author Ken Gire beautifully describes our real home from The Divine Embrace:

“The last part of the book of Revelation talks a lot about that home.  It is a place where there is no darkness. No death. No disease. Not even tears.  It is a resplendent landscape, with a river of life running through it, and a tree of life growing in it, and the glory of the Lord illumining everything in this bejeweled world that awaits us.  Who wouldn’t want Jesus to come back to take us there, and soon?”

On this journey on planet earth, you have to reach a point when you realize that nothing down here ultimately satisfies, proven by the aching in our hearts and our guts to run into the arms of Jesus.   

Gire continues… “Maybe the tug we feel when we see a beautiful landscape shimmering in the sunlight or the tears we experience when we hear an enchanting aria reaching its crescendo, maybe what is welling up inside us is the longing we all have for home.  But maybe it is more than that. Maybe it is not so much a longing for home as it is a longing for the One who awaits us there.”

God wants everyone to come home.  Some rebel and some flat out refuse His invitation. Rather than close up shop, he keeps the door open. In fact, it even seems like He keeps the door open a little too long.  Why does God take the long road? There is a legitimate reason for that as found in 2 Peter 3: 8-9 “But do not forget this one thing, dear friends: With the Lord a day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years are like a day. The Lord is not slow in keeping his promise, as some understand slowness.  He is patient with you, not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance.” (NIV) Are you really anticipating Jesus’ return to take you home?

pictures courtesy of “Nelson & his Nikon”