Longing for Home

Today was very much a day where selfish Kari reigned.  Determined to enjoy this time of “rest” and not sit around and think about how discouraged we feel that we don’t have a job and our house won’t sell and we’ve nothing to do but wait…we planned a family day with Dutch.  It’s $2 Tuesday so we figured for $4, we could spend the day at the zoo and then we’d been generously given a gift card to PF Chang’s restaurant, so we figured we’d use that and enjoy a big delicious mid-day meal and make it home in time for Jeff to leave for tutoring at 2:30.  And though the food was amazingly wonderful and Dutch did love petting the little baby goats, the rain poured on us (when will the sun come?!), and apparently every school district in Oregon had taken advantage of $2 Tuesday as well, so after peering over a sea of heads to get a peek at the reluctant wildlife, we were so cold and wet that when lunch time came we decided to forego the Northwest exhibits and head for cover and food.  As I said, lunch was delicious, but I understand now why people take their toddlers to McDonalds instead.  Our waitress was wonderful, but by the time we left there was more food on the floor, in Dutch’s hair, and on our clothes than in our bellies. 

So we came back with an exhausted, cold, wet toddler and all I could think about was how much I wanted to go home.  Home home.  A real home.  Jeff left for tutoring and I laid in bed and cried, exhausted, listening to Dutch cry in the room next to us, trying to settle his little overtired self down.  Why, God? We’re “living by faith”, we’re trusting You. Why can’t you just provide something, anything, for us?  Why?

And as I prayed, I thought of China.  I opened my laptop and searched China Earthquake, and began to read, and began to see. I searched until I found photos, dozens and dozens of them. Photos with warnings on them: Caution: Graphic Content.  The real stuff.  Small, children’s fingers poking out of a heap of rubble.  Rows and rows of bodies covered in sheets.  Wailing and weeping.  Collapsed schools–elementary schools.  Brave rescuers.  Pain.  Unmasked, hideous pain.  Why, God?  My little world enlarged beyond my own bedroom.  Why, God? 

Home.  That’s why.  This world is not our home.  The freedom we enjoy is the freedom that causes the pain that gnaws at us at night and steals our perfect joy.  We’ve chosen evil.  This world that’s full of the fallen, the sinful, the imperfect.  This world that’s under the sway of the evil one.  But someday, Behold, I make all things new.  Ahhh. Those words. Someday we will hear those words. Someday the One who created us will create again, a new heaven, a new earth.  He will wipe every tear from our eye, He will quiet us with His love and sing over us as we revel in His presence.  We ache because we were created for something greater.  I still don’t understand it all.  I still pray and plead with God to comfort those families in China right now who are suffering beyond my comprehension.  I pray that God would reveal Himself to them, that they would know Him and His Son Jesus Christ, the one who makes all things new.  I pray they, and I, and you, would know that what we long for is home. Our true home.  Our home with Him, for all eternity.  Home.