{Be Real} When Your Heart Needs a Home

The glimmer of my tiny Christmas tree lights shimmer and I exhale, writing this to you.

We are about to celebrate the greatest of all miracles in a few short weeks – God coming to earth. It is truly a miracle, that God came down to get us.

There are just some times and some seasons that we realize, we don’t know how to save ourselves. And some days, we don’t remember the way home. And then in the softest of those moments, we hear God draw us near.

Recently, I was on a flight home to New York and had this moment with God. I was upgraded to an Even More Room Seat on this flight (I was pretty pumped!!), and there was literally nobody in my entire row on the plane. That’s right – I was alone, with plenty of space. I was trying to nod off, when the sun’s bright glimmer caught the corner of my left eye. I looked out the window, and saw the most incredible sunset.

Sunsets have always been God’s language of speaking to me. And I knew it, he was calling me.

Take out your journal, write.

God was helping me untangle the mess that I had felt this season. You know that feeling, when suddenly a place that was so familiar to you suddenly feels unfamiliar? And you feel like you don’t belong there anymore. My heart tangled and untangled and re-tangled, as I felt like I was standing on shifting sand. I know you get it. God takes away some things we hold onto, to give us something better.

Maybe it’s not a literal home you’ve lost – maybe it’s a job, a relationship, or a community. A passion of yours. Suddenly you feel you are on sinking sand and that anchor – it’s floating up from the depths and you’re just dying to attach it to something again. And something inside you aches and groans, for something more. You know God made you for something more. You’ve forgotten many things, but not that thing.

That’s when the sun blazes into your window and the Lord whispers to your heart, like he did for me that day on the airplane.

Take out your journal, meet me, I’m here.

Why can meeting God be the hardest thing we do some days?

But that sunset, that light, was beaming, beaming – calling me home.

That sun was a reminder that my home is not here. These things we try and grasp onto to create a sense of place, a sense of peace – they’re not our true home. Our home is in heaven. Why is that so hard to remember? Am I alone here?  As C.S. Lewis said,

“If we find ourselves with a desire that nothing in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that we were made for another world.”

And we were! We’re just passing through here. There’s something about being on a plane, above the clouds. We see our home is not any location where we can land – our home is the One who lands within us. God’s Holy Spirit, an outpouring of the gift of His love.

During Advent, we prepare our hearts to receive the one who asks to have a home in our hearts.

His steady and still invitation, Come.

The lights beam from my little Christmas tree, as God whispers, Come. Be with me. I left everything in heaven to be with you.

I don’t know what your heart has dealt with this season, what you have lost, what questions swirl in your mind, what you battle each morning when your feet hit the floor. But what I do know, is that is the place we will find God. Right in our mess.

It’s not always easy to pick our messy selves up where we are and walk home to God. I wrestle with it too, that coming home. And I know this is why our Jesus, our Home – came unto us.

The lights flicker on the tree, and I feel it – nothing can keep His light from reaching us, His arms from embracing us.

“The Word became flesh and blood, and moved into the neighborhood. We saw the glory with our own eyes, the one-of-a-kind glory, like Father, like Son, Generous inside and out, true from start to finish.” (John 1:14 MSG)

The One who knows that our hearts and our world move and shift, moved into OUR neighborhood. He came to the place we call home to become our home forever.

This season, as you look at the glittering lights, or feel the beams of the setting sun, I pray you go home, sister. To your true home in Jesus. Take his hand. Go home.

And wherever you find yourself this season, this truth rings, and our hearts too can sing:

Because He is our Home, and He is Emmanuel, God with us;

We can feel at peace anywhere – because He is with us everywhere.

 

“For unto us a Child is born, Unto us a Son is given; And the government will be upon His shoulder.  And His name will be called Wonderful, Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.”

-Isaiah 9:6

“I’ve loved you the way my Father has loved me.  Make yourselves at home in my love.  If you keep my commands, you’ll remain intimately at home in my love.  That’s what I’ve done – kept my Father’s commands and made myself at home in his love.”

-John 15:9-10 (MSG)