Psalm 84 (I'm Home)
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“How lovely is your dwelling place; O Lord of hosts! My soul longs, yes faints for the courts of the Lord My heart and my flesh sing for joy to the living God Even the sparrow finds a home, and the swallow, a nest for her young, at Your altars, O Lord of hosts, my King and my God. Blessed are those who dwell in Your house, Ever singing Your praise”
I have been chasing home for as far back as my memories go. Having lived in more places and attended more schools than I can even count on 2 hands and feet, there has always been an underlying wrestle with belonging that has lived just beneath the surface of my soul. A voice inside that seeks to convince me that I don’t quite belong anywhere with anyone. A deceptive inner narrative that constantly suggests “don’t get too comfortable because before you know it, someone’s gonna leave and something’s gonna change”. Growing up in a household where we weren’t allowed to sit on the living room furniture and where we didn’t share family meals around the dining table, my concept and experience of “home" has been a bit distorted from the beginning. The very chaotic nature of my home life made it the last last place that I ever wanted to be.
I brought this distorted view of home and family into my relationship with Christ coming to faith in my teenage years. It took me years to shake the suspicion that my “home” in God was temporary and conditional at best. If I was to belong to the Father and be a part of His family, then I had to work for it. I had to live up to it, I had to strive for it, I had to perform for it and even then it wouldn’t be enough to satisfy my core and fundamental needs for acceptance, affection and belonging.
It has taken me years to become completely convinced that in Christ and because of His atoning work on the cross, I have been given absolutely EVERYTHING that I need to feel at home, at rest, and settled wherever I find myself. I have been grafted into a family that has been established since before the beginning of time. So, regardless of whatever community, and circumstance I find myself in, my home both now and for all of eternity is to be in fellowship with the One who made me for Himself. I have become convinced that every semblance of comfort and safety on this side of eternity is but a shadow of the real thing to which I have complete access. I understand more fully and except more joyfully that in Christ alone I have absolutely everything that I need to live a full and abundant life regardless of whatever lot His providence leads me to.
I completely understand the longing of the soul and the fainting of the flesh for communion with God that the Psalmist describes in Psalm 84. That has been the exact cry of my heart before I was even able to name it and it is the truest ache that stirs within the heart of every person that’s ever lived or breathed. It’s a longing for more that leads broken sinners to broken wells that never fully satisfy.
“You made us for yourself O Lord and our heart is restless until it finds its rest in You” St. Augustine
For those who have by faith been adopted into the Father’s household, there is rest from the angst of this life to which no counterfeit can compare. There is a table of communion where you are known through and through and loved just the same. Consider today how You might abide more deeply and rest more fully in the “home” that will never be taken away.
In the doorway of Your Father’s house, You are home. Settle in. There is a room where the door is never closed.
It took me years of walking with the Lord the realize that home is a Person. The Person of Christ, the abiding place where I am fully known, fully accepted, fully loved, fully enjoyed.
