One of the books I've been reading during my devotional time is entitled, The Prodigal God." In it, the author, Timothy Keller, talks about the elusive desire to go home. After we've grown up and moved on, we long, at times to go home, to reconnect with the feeling of fitting in and fully being ourself. Sadly, there is no going home. Returning to the place we grew up just leaves us feeling empty, sad, missing something.
The holidays, which are fast approaching, have a similar effect. We look forward to Thanksgiving and Christmas, hoping to experience that joy we remember from our youth, only to find it just isn't what we remember, something is missing. It begins to dawn on us that no one can ever go home again, no one can relive that memory.
A question given rise in the afore mentioned book is, if what we "remembered itself turns out to be a remembering." In other words, does our remembering, our longing even exist in this world at all. Could our yearning go back to a place beyond here?
An old hymn, named 'Beulah Land," pines, "I'm kind of homesick for a country to which I've never been before," which reflects the book of Hebrews' affirmation that we are "foreigners and strangers on earth...longing for a better country - a heavenly one..." (Heb 11:13-16).
The thing is, I believe, home truly exists where the heart is and our hearts long for the Father and his house. Nothing, no place and no one in this world can fill that longing that only God can fill.
Jus' Sayn.
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