“It’s a funny thing about coming home…it looks the same, smells the same, feels the same. You’ll realize what’s changed… is you“. -from ‘The Curious Case of Benjamin Button.”
Hey, guess what? I’m finally coming home! You read that right-it looks like my seemingly never-ending journey will soon be coming to a close. In exactly 40 days from now I will be spending the night at home in my own bed…hard to imagine! Time sure does like to play tricks on you. For instance, it seems like just yesterday I was packing my bags and headed to World Race training camp. As it turns out— that was one year ago today. I remember hopping a plane headed for Atlanta, not having any idea who I was meeting or what I was getting myself into.
“I must be crazy!,” I thought.
“What is this thing even about… what if all the people are weird? What if I come home even weirder?”
Okay, so maybe training camp was a bit ‘out there’ at times but it was one of the best weeks of my life and turned out to be a mere foreshadowing of things to come.
It got me thinking a lot about our expectations of home, which perfectly coincided with the chapter I was reading in ‘Prodigal God’. It says:
“Home” exercises a powerful influence over human life.
It is a powerful but elusive concept. The strong feelings that surround it reveal some deep longing within us for a place that absolutely fits and suits us, where we can be, or perhaps find, our true selves.
Many of the people in my church have shared with me how disappointing Christmas and Thanksgiving are to them. They prepare for holidays hoping that, finally this year, the gathering of the family at that important place will deliver the experience of warmth, joy, comfort, and love that they want from it. But these events almost always fail, crushed under the weight of our impossible expectations”.
He goes on to talk about a ‘spiritual homesickness’ that is within us, that we are all exiles longing for home…and part of bigger story that started way back in the book of Genesis. Think about it! Adam and Eve were created to live in the garden of God, the world we were built for. There was no sickness or sadness or decay… but because of their exile we now live in a world that does fit our deepest longings. The story is played out in the Bible time and time again…Cain who killed his brother and was forced to restlessly wander the earth; Jacob who cheated his father and fled into exile for years; Moses and the Israelites wandering through the desert; and finally the entire nation of Israel being exiled again, taken captive in Babylon.
In the New Testament Jesus shows up on the scene and says he is going to be ushering in the “kingdom of God” (Mark 1:15). What is THAT all about?
One of the things we were taught from the beginning of the World Race is that being part of the Kingdom means helping bring the ‘fruitfulness of the garden to the barrenness of the earth’. Literally…creating HEAVEN on EARTH!
The Ultimate Homecoming will end with the ‘marriage supper of the lamb’ in the New Jerusalem where we will once again see the tree of life, whose leaves now affect ‘the healing of the nations’ (Revelation 22:2) At the end of all things the whole earth will become the Garden again! All the suffering and disease and poverty I’ve seen this year will be no more. The nations will no longer be at war. Jesus will return the world to be the perfect home it was created to be. As Revelation 21:4 says:
“He will wipe away every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain-for the old order of things has passed away”.
And THAT will be a homecoming worth celebrating!
