Yearning for home

I recently got back from a month long trip overseas. It was a wonderful time, but by the third week, I was ready to go home. As much as experiencing the new and exotic can be captivating and exhilarating, the ordinary and mundane provides a certain level of comfort and security. It wasn't that I missed anybody in particular, I just missed living in an environment with a familiar language and customs I was used to.

The Bible describes a homesickness for our heavenly home. But the funny thing about this "heavenly home" is that it's something completely foreign to us. "Streets of gold" and a "house with many rooms" doesn't scream "home" to me--it's not a familiar environment. I suspect that James Boice may be right when he said, "It is not the jasper walls and the pearly gates that are going to make heaven attractive. It is our being with God." Maybe we are homesick the same way the prodigal son was homesick. The prodigal son didn't expect to return to a familiar environment, but instead his focus was returning to the care of his father.