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n East Africa, when people want to know where you live, they always ask, “Where do you stay?” But if they desire to know where you belong, they ask, “Where’s home?” This contrast is a subtle but essential difference among people who consider their tribal homelands “home,” and think of the houses they inhabit as merely temporary perching places. Roots, they believe, lay deeper than bricks and mortar, fixed into areas where their tribes and families have generations of life, where the bodies of those who pass away are carried back for burial. As a child living in Central America, I perched lightly in my homes. From the time I was born, my missionary family moved to a new house and city every two years, sometimes more frequently. By the time I went to college at the age of eighteen, I had lived in thirteen different houses. Maybe that’s the reason why I connect my pursuit of God with my desire to “dwell in the house of the LORD forever” (Psalm 23:6).
WHERE THE LORD GOES
When the disciples left their homes to follow Jesus, they began a three-year trek with a man who said of Himself, “Jesus replied, ‘Foxes have dens and birds have nests, but the Son of Man has no place to lay his head.’ ” (Luke 9:58). Willingly they left behind their houses and jobs to learn from the Messiah and stay with Him. They had times when Christ gave them instructions and sent them on missionary trips, two by two. On some journeys, they took nothing with them. Wherever lodging became available, they stayed there. On this trip, they took extra clothes and money. Little by little, Jesus weaned their trust and sense of security away from their houses, from their lands, from their people, from their own families, and bound them to Himself. The disciples felt most at home when they gathered together with Him. On the evening of His betrayal, their distress grew with every thought of Jesus leaving them. Jesus spoke some of His most comforting words in that hour of anxiety.
“Do not let your hearts be troubled. You believe in God; believe also in me. My Father’s house has many rooms; if that were not so, would I have told you that I am going there to prepare a place for you? And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come back and take you to be with me that you also may be where I am” ( John 14:1–3). Jesus connected their desire to stay with Him and their longing to be home. In their pursuit of Christ, they instinctively felt that He had become their fortress, and they wanted to live with Him forever.
Surely your goodness and love will follow me all the days of my life, and I will dwell in the house of the LORD forever. (Psalm 23:6)
Fundamental to our relationship with God, our pursuit of Him can be expressed as a deep desire to be with Him in His place—a longing that where He is, we may also be. David said that his soul longed for the courts of the Lord. Paul considered that his mortal body was no better than a tent. Still, one day he would receive an imperishable body with which to live with Jesus eternally in the heavens (2 Corinthians 5). We don’t want to have a heavenly fellowship with Him as disembodied spirits floating in space, but we long to be physically together with Him, forever in His house.
VOICE.DT S .E DU /M AG A Z IN E DA LLA S TH E O LO G ICA L SE MI N ARY
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