Day 10: Home
“They reported to Moses, ‘We went into the land where you sent us. Indeed it is flowing with milk and honey, and here is some of its fruit.’”
Numbers 13:27
The garden of Eden was designed by God as a perfect place for human life to flourish. A place of beauty, a place of plenty, a place of sufficiency and security. A place of human companionship and a place of divine fellowship.
Since our fall and the exile of our first parents. We have all been born, homesick. We enter life with a deep rooted longing for a land that we’ve never seen, for a country we’ve never set foot upon. We look at our world, see mess, ruin, misery, we feel pain and loss and instinctually recognise that this is not how things are supposed to be.
At other times we experience beauty or glory in spectacular sunrise, a stunning vista, a beautiful voice, or piece of music and it sparks in us an odd sense of déjà vu.
C.S Lewis wrote:
“These things, the beauty, are a memory of our own past, good images of what we really desire; but if they are mistaken for the thing itself they turn into dumb idols, breaking the hearts of their worshipers. For they are not the thing itself; they are only the scent of a flower we have not found, the echo of a tune we have not heard, news from a country we have never yet visited.”
German and Welsh both have a word for this echo. Fernweh (Ger): Meaning, Far pain or far sickness. Hiraeth (Wel): Meaning, Deep incompleteness, Grief filled homesickness.
The answer to our Fernweh or Hiraeth is central to God’s saving work. The Old Testament expresses this in Israel’s journey to the Promised Land. A land flowing with milk and honey. God’s redeemed people journeying to the land the Lord has prepared for them, a place where they could flourish. A new Eden.
Sadly the people who entered the Promised Land were by and large the same as those who left Eden. Dead in heart, enslaved to sin. Instead of a city on hill a light for the nations they transformed the promised land into just another land. Eventually just like Adam and Eve they were Exiled.
In the Christmas story we find God’s great solution. Jesus The King of Heaven leaves His own country and travels to ours. He came to redeem His people, not from slavery in Egypt, He came to redeem us from slavery to sin, to transform us into a people fit for His kingdom and one day He will return to transform the world doing away with sin and all it’s wretched effects. Bringing the New Jerusalem, Eden restored and rolled out on a global scale. Where all who know and love Jesus will live with Him in our perfect forever home.
“What no eye has seen, no ear has heard, and no human heart has conceived, God has prepared these things for those who love him.”
1 Corinthians 2:9
C.S. Lewis gets the last word today:
“If I find in myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world”
Written by Andrew Mathieson
A Thought to Remember: Jesus has come to bring His people home. A Bit More to Read: Numbers 13, Revelation 22:1-5 A Question to Ask: Do I long for heaven? A Song to Sing: Christ is mine forevermore. A Picture for the kids: Grapes