Running Away to Home: If all there is to human life is physical birth, life, and death...what good is it?

So I want you to do me a favor...close your eyes (but not while you're reading...if it's too late, you just won't know what to do next, sorry), take a deep breath and think about home. What do you see in your mind's eye? What does it smell like? Are you safe? Are you loved? Are you caught up in the happiness that wells up in your chest as you realize that you are complete, whole, fulfilled? Is your best friend there? You know...the one who knows everything about you and loves you still?

Now breathe deeply again. Hmmmmm, home. I must admit, I am homesick. And I am lovesick. And for the first time, home is not somewhere I have yet been. I am beginning to be able to glimpse what the author of Hebrews talks about when they write "These...confessed that they were strangers and pilgrims on the earth. For those who say such things declare plainly that they seek a homeland. And truly if they had called to mind that country from which they had come out, they would have had opportunity to return. But now they desire a better, that is, a heavenly country. Therefore God is not ashamed to be called their God, for He has prepared a city for them." -Heb. 11:13-16 This world I see around me is not my home, although I gladly sojourn here in obedience to the Lord for as long as He wants.

It's only beginning in me. But when I think "home," I look forward to seeing the One who is my safe place, my Shepherd and Friend, and the Love of my life: my God. With this looking forward comes a deep groaning within, a yearning to see Him and to love Him well while I am in this temporary place. He loves people - all people. Whether rich, poor, old, young, happy, sad, angry, distant, whole, broken, empty, full, sick, well, educated or not. He loves them. And because of sin, they cannot be near Him unless they let Him pay for their guilt - unless they give their lives to Him. He is desperate for people to know Him and to know the fullness of who He is. I am a "missionary" because I love Jesus...because He is worth everything I can give and more...because He called me to the 'harvest,' and because in His grace He has turned my little world up-side-down to see that there is more...

WHAT IS THE TRUTH?
and where may I meet reality?
Only in the One who transcends that which I cannot.
Time is bigger than me.
Space exceeds my ability to move
More freely
Through all that mankind knows
And if my body is all that's known
That leaves me sitting on my own kingdom's throne
and my little kingdom is ruled by me
Don't tell them, but I'm a wretched king
And I seem to remember the truth I must have known
Before the world around me shaped my mind
I remember as a child
Way back in those days
Wanting to affect things, desiring change
For if there is more to life than me
And if love does exist...and I can learn what it means
Then, let me not settle for a temporal kiss
But let me walk in a legacy of ongoing reality
Surely, there must be more than this