Home Is Where Our Hope Is
"I heard a loud shout from the throne, saying, 'Look, God's home is now among his people! He will live with them, and they will be his people. God himself will be with them.
- Revelation 21:3 (NLT)
"Hope springs eternal in the human breast;
Man never Is, but always To be blest.
The soul, uneasy, and confin'd from home, Rests and expatiates in a life to come."
— Alexander Pope, An Essay on Man
Home. The word conjures images of all kinds our current house, the house we grew up in, and the houses (or dwellings) where others live. Whatever the image, we reckon it to be a place of life, happiness, safety, and security. A place where we can be ourselves.
Hope. The ready and full expectation that something very good and beneficial is going to happen. It goes well beyond "wishful thinking," the kind of "hope" that is immediate and temporary; e.g., "I hope I find a good parking space." True hope is much richer. It engenders confidence in, and a joyful anticipation of, what lies ahead.
Combine the two- Home and Hope and you have a vivid picture of what God has promised us in His Word regarding our eternal dwelling.
"Death, be not proud," penned the English poet, John Donne. Donne aptly understood that death was but an entry point, a turnstile if you will, into the ultimate promises of God, into the actuality of Isaiah's prophetic vision of Immanuel-"God with us" now and forever a prophecy come to fruition in Jesus, so that He could declare to His disciples, "You can be sure of this: I am always with you." - Matthew 28:20 (NLT)
This is true now through the Holy Spirit, and so it will be true in absolute and irreversible reality when Christ returns to establish His everlasting home among us, here on a renewed Earth. This is made unassailably clear in Revelation 21. To summarize John's vision: God will come down to the renewed Earth to make His home, His permanent dwelling place, among His people.
That's us! That should fill us with hope, with joy unspeakable and full of glory!
Alexander Pope had it exactly right,
"Hope springs eternal." Death, for the believer, is not an ending but a beginning, an everlasting life with God where He personally will "wipe every tear from our eyes, and there will be no more death or sorrow or crying or pain. All these things will be gone forever." - Revelation 21:4 (NLT).
That's our future home, a home in which we gladly and enthusiastically anchor our hope.
Be encouraged my brothers and sisters, for this is the promise that awaits us. It only gets better from here!
A fellow beggar along the way,
Greg