A Heavenly Country
Amanda MacQuarrie
August 29, 2024
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Hebrews 11: 13-16 (NRSVA)
13 All of these died in faith without having received the promises, but from a distance they saw and greeted them. They confessed that they were strangers and foreigners on the earth, 14 for people who speak in this way make it clear that they are seeking a homeland. 15 If they had been thinking of the land that they had left behind, they would have had opportunity to return. 16 But as it is, they desire a better country, that is, a heavenly one. Therefore God is not ashamed to be called their God; indeed, he has prepared a city for them.
Where is home for you?
The place where you were born?
The place you grew up?
The place where you have grown and nurtured your family?
What makes a home?
Earlier this year I very suddenly and with little warning had to move out of my home, a place I loved where I had nurtured and raised my children. Since then I’ve been living temporarily in another house with most of my belongings in storage as we wait for somewhere new to live. It’s a roof over our heads… but it’s not home.
There’s a restlessness, an uncertainty — an uncertainty and sense of dislocation — and a longing…
St Augustine famously says in his ‘Confessions’ that God made us for Godself and that our hearts are restless until they rest in God.
We live the life of restless wanderers here on Earth, aliens in a strange land, as our hearts long to be reunited with home. That other country, that other Kingdom.
That Kingdom which is breaking through in the now, but is not yet fully here.
The Kingdom that plants a seed, removes a brick from a wall every time we choose love over hate,
Every time we choose welcome over exclusion,
Every time we choose acceptance over judgement or condemnation.
Every time we reach out and welcome in love that Kingdom comes… and home moves closer.
Home.
The place of acceptance, the place of rest, the place where love dwells.
Pray:
Home Maker,
Refuge,
High Tower,
May we find our rest in you.
May our thirst be quenched,
Our hunger sated,
And may your Kingdom come,
That all may know You are Home!
Amen.
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