Go Home

You are 8 years old and are playing in the street with the other children.  It’s that eerie time of the day where the sky is changing colors as the day slowly gives way to night.  The dim yellow street lights flicker on one by one down the sidewalk.  Your friends’ mothers begin to call out their names and they each start to run home.  They don’t seem nearly as heartbroken over your interrupted game of manhunt as you do. You yell to their backs, “Come on guys, don’t go! We’re having so much fun!”  Finally you’re the last one out and it is completely dark now.  There’s a warm glow coming through the windows and you can see your friends inside their homes with their family smiling around the table.  You slowly walk toward a window pane and the sounds of the deep, wholehearted laughter reach your ears.  As you begin to press your face up against the glass you smell the aroma of chocolate chip cookies from the warm oven.  You can’t even understand how your friend is the same one who was just outside playing with you.  His expression says, “It was nice playing with you; I enjoyed it.  But now-I am home.” But you are alone, on the outside looking in.  You are merely observing intimacy.  You want to go home.

            This is exactly how I feel when I encounter someone who is madly in love with Jesus.  It’s clear they spend time in God’s presence (a home) where they are secure, filled with joy, at peace, completely satisfied and full of love.  Our time together (on the street) isn’t their source of joy; they have a home where their desires and longings are satisfied.  Our friendship is, well, simply extra.

            How often I feel like I’m on the street, merely observing the intimacy that others have with Jesus.  The issue is that I am on the street looking for satisfaction that can only be found at home.  I think that the friendships, activities, food vendors and entertainment out there are enough to satisfy my soul and make me complete-but they don’t.  I only need a glimpse of home, that beautiful, soul-satisfying, love relationship, to remember my own home…

            In God’s presence I am filled with joy; there are eternal pleasures (Psalm 16:11).  With Him I can lie down and sleep in peace because he makes me dwell in safety (Psalm 4:7-8).  Only in His presence is my soul calm and content, like a weaned child with its mother (Psalm 131:2).  I remember the times that my soul was satisfied in His presence, satisfied “as with the richest of food” (Psalm 63:1-5), and it makes me hungrier!  I want to go home.  But I forget! I fight the temptation daily to seek satisfaction elsewhere.  I’m not always convinced in my heart that time in God’s presence is better, more precious, more valuable, more fulfilling than anything else. I do not always love and cherish time with God.  But thank God I can be honest with Him and ask for His help.  A.W Tozer summarizes it well with his prayer:

“Oh God, I have tasted Thy goodness, and it has both satisfied me and made me thirsty for more.  I am painfully conscious of my need for further grace.  I am ashamed of my lack of desire.  O God, the Triune God, I want to want Thee; I long to be filled with longing; I thirst to be made more thirsty still.  Show me Thy glory, I pray Thee, so that I may know Thee indeed.  Begin in mercy a new work of love within me.  Say to my soul, ‘Rise up my love, my fair one, and come away.’ Then give me grace to rise and follow Thee up from this misty lowland where I have wandered so long.”

            May we each internalize this prayer and make it our own.  May we refuse to stay on the outside, observing the intimacy between our friends and God.  May we be madly in love with Jesus ourselves and spend sweet, sweet time in His presence.  May we Go Home.