Longing For Home
Growing up, I don’t remember having a comfort object. I didn’t need a specific teddy bear to sleep, nor carry a special blanket over my shoulder. I didn’t cry out for a certain doll to snuggle when I felt sick or scared. Rather, my security and comfort came from home itself. I felt safest there. This feeling has carried on from being a young girl to being a wife and mother. As a college student, it wasn’t enough to be in the small living area of the dormitory pod I shared with my closest friends—I found true comfort in my own room. Now as a young mom, a vacation or even a busy day in town makes me look forward to curling up on my own couch. And when I’m sick, I desperately long to be home, even when the hospital tells me it’s best to be in one of their beds.
Though I’ve had many places to call home, whichever one was home at the time was my greatest security and refuge. Everything about home is a comfort to me—my bed, my couch, my blankets, my bathroom, my routine, my smells, and of course my family. All of what makes a place a home is my security blanket.
Pregnant with twins, I’ve had to consider the possibility that my babies may require time in the NICU—three hours away from home. This thought frequently sprinkles anxiety over my heart as I consider what that would mean: Three hours will separate us from our oldest son being cared for by his grandparents. Our first weeks as new parents could be spent in an unfamiliar hotel room. I won’t know every scrap of missing paint on those unfeeling walls, or the doors that don’t close just right. And how many nights will we go without goodnight kisses and hugs? How many days of takeout food and anxious waiting until we will finally share in the sights and smells of being together in our home again? All these things and more haunt me as I await the day my babies come. I’m homesick now, sitting in my own living room.
Maybe you know similar feelings. Maybe you didn’t have babies in the NICU, but instead you were the one waiting in a hospital room wondering how many more days would pass before being released. Or perhaps you’re a new college student trying to make your apartment feel like home but instead it only makes you more homesick. Or maybe you’re a young family who has recently sold your home and moved away to a new city where you hardly know a soul. Or perhaps it’s none of these situations, but you’re still longing for home.
Abraham likewise intimately understood what it was like to be uprooted from his home:
By faith Abraham obeyed when he was called to go out to a place that he was to receive as an inheritance. And he went out, not knowing where he was going. By faith he went to live in the land of promise, as in a foreign land, living in tents with Isaac and Jacob, heirs with him of the same promise. For he was looking forward to the city that has foundations, whose designer and builder is God. By faith Sarah herself received power to conceive, even when she was past the age, since she considered him faithful who had promised. Therefore from one man, and him as good as dead, were born descendants as many as the stars of heaven and as many as the innumerable grains of sand by the seashore.
These all died in faith, not having received the things promised, but having seen them and greeted them from afar, and having acknowledged that they were strangers and exiles on the earth. For people who speak thus make it clear that they are seeking a homeland. If they had been thinking of that land from which they had gone out, they would have had opportunity to return. But as it is, they desire a better country, that is, a heavenly one. Therefore God is not ashamed to be called their God, for he has prepared for them a city. (Heb. 11:8-16 ESV)
Abraham was called by God to leave behind all that he knew of home. His family, his society’s way of living, his false gods and their ways of worship, and the place where he laid his head each night to sleep. And by faith he obeyed. And with this calling God gave him a promise of a flourishing land and sons that out-numbered the grains of sand by the sea. By faith he believed, though he was an old man with no children and spent his years living in tents.
Abraham died without beholding the fulfilment of this promise—only a glimpse of it in the birth of his son Isaac. How did he continue to believe God’s Word? What kept him from turning around and going back to the land of his fathers?
By the persevering power of God, he kept his eyes not on the earthly aspect of the promise but the eternal one—the heavenly country, the city God had prepared for him. That’s where his hope was found—the land where he would forever walk with God and be with God without the encumbrance of sin. The city where the ground was not cursed by sin, groaning for its release.
We all want a safe, comforting place to call home. A place where we can curl up in a comfy chair with worn arms and a cozy blanket. A place where we can have messy hair and makeup-less faces without feeling self-conscious. A place where people who we love and who love us in return are eagerly awaiting us. A place where we can cry and our tears won’t make others feel awkward. A place where the people know our sins and love us still but strive to guide us toward holiness.
As believers, we all have this home. We have this home in Christ.
It’s the hope of this home that I want to cling to, whatever happens when these beautiful babies come. Whether in hospitals, the NICU, hotels, doctors’ offices, or in the comfort of my own home, I want to fix my eyes on the unchanging, perfect home kept for me in heaven. The one that will not tarnish, where all tears will be wiped away, where sickness will be eradicated, and where I will be with my Saviour forever.
What makes heaven so lovely and should give us such hope isn’t its golden streets and glowing rewards—rather, it’s being with Christ himself. He is what makes heaven heaven. Being unhindered in his presence without the lurking of sin. Though I love my home and find much earthly comfort in it, it is only temporary, and I am not a true citizen of it. My citizenship lies within the heavenly city where my Saviour embraces me at the gates. That is my true home.
Lord, teach my wandering heart to long for this heavenly abode. Lord, teach me to eagerly wait for your return when you will bring me safely home.
