A Glimpse of Home

    This week I was blessed to have my parents visit as well as my pastor from my church back home. Faces from home are a wonderful sight when you’ve been away for three months. However the visits are always far too short and with the joy carry a hint of sadness. Once you’ve been refreshed by a taste of life back home it’s hard to begin another ordinary, and perhaps slightly dreary, week of school. And there’s always a small sense of uncertainty. After finally acclimating and settling in to life in a new place, you get a glimpse of the home you left behind and begin to feel confused about where exactly home is.

    I love my school and I wouldn’t trade the opportunity to study here for anything. In one sense Chicago has become my home and I have many good friends here who have become my family. But whenever I get a taste of my home in Minnesota there is a part of me that longs to be there, that can’t wait until the next break that I’ll be going home and enjoying the presence of my family, the church I grew up in, and the familiarity of the place I lived the first eighteen years of my life.

    Today as I was considering this it occurred to me that the sense of uncertainty that we feel in this world and that lack of ‘home’ in our lives here is a good thing. Although the insecurity can be frightening, it’s a reminder to us that we are longing for and hoping for something so much better than what we’ll ever taste in this world. Once we’ve caught a glimpse of who God is, we will never really feel like we’re ‘home’ until we dwell in his presence for all eternity.

“Oh taste and see that the Lord is good! Blessed is the man who takes refuge in him!”

– Psalm 34:8

    Having tasted his goodness and seen his great love for us, we can never be satisfied with anything else.

“For we know that the whole creation has been groaning together in the pains of childbirth until now. And not only the creation, but we ourselves, who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies. For in this hope we were saved. Now who hopes for what he sees? But if we hope for what we do not see, we wait for it with patience.”
– Romans 8:22-25

    In the midst of busy days, long to-do lists, and a life that seems to go by faster and faster each year, it’s easy to lose focus and forget what we’re waiting for. But if we fix our eyes on Jesus and look toward the day when we will see him face to face, even the most dreary and ordinary days are filled with joy because of the hope we have in him. Even in the uncertainty we know that our hope is sure. And so with confidence and joy we press on, striving to become more like Jesus and give others that glimpse of what’s in store for those who have trusted in Christ.

“So we do not lose heart. Though our outer self is wasting away, our inner self is being renewed day by day. For this light momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal glory beyond all comparison, as we look not to the things that are seen but to the things that are unseen. For the things that are seen are transient, but the things that are unseen are eternal.”

– 2 Corinthians 4:16-18

[soli deo gloria]