On our refrigerator at home dwells a magnet stating, “Dorothy was right. There’s no place like home.” At face value, I could list other places which have no comparative competition. For example, there’s no place like a barber shop. Or there’s no place like the inside of a silo. I could go big: There’s no place like a zoo. Or small: There’s no place like the inside of a clothes dryer.
But that wasn’t the point Dorothy was making. Home possesses a quality no other place has the capability of possessing. The only way a clothes dryer could possess this quality is if it became a home.
C.S. Lewis once said, “If I find in myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probably explanation is that I was made for another world.”
Tweaking his saying, we could say the only place in the world where we feel complete satisfaction is at home. It’s also where we may feel the most secure or the most loved. April and I thoroughly enjoyed our latest vacation. However, we were both eager to get home. Home meant rest, peace, goodness, comfort, solitude—the list is limitless.
Even at that, we often get tired of home. When I was a boy, my common complaint to my mother was being at home provided nothing to do. Home was boring. She would tell me to turn off the TV, get off the couch and go outside. Like that was going to help!
Feeling a need to leave this home points to another part of Lewis’ quote: ‘…a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy.’ What is that desire?
It begins with this fact: We humans are eternal beings entirely destined for another home, whether the new address is Heaven or Hell.
For believers who put our unwavering trust in Jesus Christ as our Savior, He makes this unchangeable promise in John 14:1-3: “Do not let your hearts be troubled. You believe in God; believe also in me. My Father’s house has many rooms; if that were not so, would I have told you that I am going there to prepare a place for you? And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come back and take you to be with me that you also may be where I am.”
Jesus describes why we believers can feel dissatisfaction about our earthly homes. We know we have another home awaiting us. This future home is pure perfection in every way and beyond our comprehension and imagination. All we can do at this moment is yearn for it.
Yearning for what? In our limited knowledge, we may envision a heaven filled with majestic mountains because we love mountains. But what about the believers who love beaches, ocean waves, and limitless sky? They may envision ‘heaven’ in a different way. Either way, that leaves out the believing Eskimo, who only desires a perfect snowscape.
Rather than the places or things of Heaven, it’s a quality of existence that we yearn for and captures us. Listen to Psalm 16:9-11: “Therefore my heart is glad and my tongue rejoices; my body also will rest secure, because you will not abandon me to the realm of the dead (Hell), nor will you let your faithful one see decay.”
Imagine a Hell in which all, including yourself, is in a constant but unending state of decay. Imagine the smell. Makes you want to cringe.
None of that applies to believers. Verse 11 tells us why: “You make known to me the path of life; you will fill me with joy in your presence, with eternal pleasures at your right hand.”
The believer knows the path to life—glorious, forever life. God, in turn, fills the believer with joy and eternal pleasures. The Hebrew word for pleasure shares the same root with ‘Eden.’ In other words, a Hebrew would connect ‘eternal pleasures’ to the Garden of Eden.
Let your heart rest in the easy yoke of your eternal home, believer. Enjoy your earthly home as much as possible. But always let your eternal home be your most cherished destination.