November 22, 2013

Reflections

As I walk through the seasons of my life here on this old New England farm, I wonder about the home Jesus has gone to prepare for me. Here in Maine I love watching the moonrise over Casco Bay, and the honking of the Canada geese as they arrive in the springtime. Come fall they wave goodbye on their way south. I love the spicy smell of autumn and the swirl of red and gold leaves. I love Friday night in my country kitchen with the smell of fresh baked bread. I love friends who sing around the grand piano and bless this old house with laughter and smiles. I love the perfume of the lilacs that bloom on the east side of the big white house in springtime. I love my home.

But there will come a day when I will be called away from this home, to a place that is even better. What will my heavenly home be like? Will I know my way around? Will I feel at home there and find every nook and cranny so very familiar to me as I do here at the old farm? I have sung about it, read about it, and prayed about it all my life, but today God gave me a special peace regarding the details of my home.

Jesus has gone to prepare a place especially for me, and is preparing “home” for me in every sense of the word. It won’t be just a room in some grand mansion-type hotel. It will actually be my own home, where I will be just as settled and peaceful there as I am here at this moment. In The Great Controversy Ellen White writes about our arrival in heaven. Jesus will swing back the garden gate for Adam, and he will behold the Eden that he lost. He will see the very vines he trained, and the flowers he once loved caring for.*

Eden was Adam’s home just as surely as this old place on the rocky coast of Maine is my present home. But my home in heaven will not be strange to me, either. I will already know my way around in it, and any joy I feel here will be multiplied many times over.

Jesus is everything to me, because He loves me as if there were no other. And His love is just what will make my new home in heaven all the more wonderful. He will be there to meet me, just as He will be there to meet Adam. He will swing open the front gate, and I will fall into His arms. And I will be home just because He is there. I will look into His eyes and know that He knows all about me and that He has at last set everything right.

Will I feel at home there? What do you think?

* Ellen G. White, The Great Controversy (Mountain View, Calif.: Pacific Press Pub. Assn., 1911), p. 648.

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