A Place Prepared

[IMAGE] Picture of my parent’s house. No longer.

Places we think of as “Home.”

A powerful word that evokes an avalanche of images and feelings.

At its foundation, home means security, peace, love, intimacy.

“Home is the place where, when you have to go there, They have to take you in.”

Perhaps one of the strongest instincts we have is to try to get “home.”

Trying to get home can mean involve different strategies.

Literally, going to a geographical location.

Recreating an environment that we loved.

Surrounding ourselves with people who help us feel significant and secure.

Home, in a sense, is a moving destination. The old book title by Thomas Wolfe had become cliche and is true: You can’t go home, again.

Essentially, if we try to return to a place you remember from the past, it won’t be the same as you remember it.

Nevertheless, we strive to create or recreate whatever “home” means to us. It is a never ending task.

All the while, we’re shaping our present lives on that picture of home and how we want to go there.

We Expect to Go Home

2 Corinthians 4:13–15 NLT

13 But we continue to preach because we have the same kind of faith the psalmist had when he said, “I believed in God, so I spoke.” 14 We know that God, who raised the Lord Jesus, will also raise us with Jesus and present us to himself together with you. 15 All of this is for your benefit. And as God’s grace reaches more and more people, there will be great thanksgiving, and God will receive more and more glory.

Everyone deserves a home with God.

We are confident that, just as Jesus is present “at home” with the Father, so will we be someday.

Paul reminds as well that we should expect to take someone with us.

But… It’s easy to be so focused on this world (one extreme) or the next world (the other extreme) that we are distracted from mission.

We Must Not Be Distracted

2 Corinthians 4:16–18 NLT

16 That is why we never give up. Though our bodies are dying, our spirits are being renewed every day. 17 For our present troubles are small and won’t last very long. Yet they produce for us a glory that vastly outweighs them and will last forever! 18 So we don’t look at the troubles we can see now; rather, we fix our gaze on things that cannot be seen. For the things we see now will soon be gone, but the things we cannot see will last forever.

Getting home and taking others with us is mission.

It’s easy to get distracted along the way.

All the challenges we have serve to motivate us to get home.

We do our best to avoid losing sight of the goal.

Part of keeping the goal in sight is to realize that all the “bright, shiny” objects of the material world will not last, but the eternal home we long for will.

We Have a True Home

2 Corinthians 5:1–5 NLT

1 For we know that when this earthly tent we live in is taken down (that is, when we die and leave this earthly body), we will have a house in heaven, an eternal body made for us by God himself and not by human hands. 2 We grow weary in our present bodies, and we long to put on our heavenly bodies like new clothing. 3 For we will put on heavenly bodies; we will not be spirits without bodies. 4 While we live in these earthly bodies, we groan and sigh, but it’s not that we want to die and get rid of these bodies that clothe us. Rather, we want to put on our new bodies so that these dying bodies will be swallowed up by life. 5 God himself has prepared us for this, and as a guarantee he has given us his Holy Spirit.

“For” = summation.

By contrast, we are in a “tent.” An impermanent, incomplete dwelling. It has value and purpose but it is not the our final home.

We will exist in a home designed by God.

The interim is difficult but not impossible and, in fact, serves a purpose.