TODAY’S SCRIPTURE John 19:25-30

My parents referred to the family farm where they grew up in southern West Virginia as “the old home place.” When my family visited my grandparents, I had my place at the end of the dining room table beside my Paw Paw. On Sundays, we attended worship in a small white church building on the right side of a dirt road where I learned that I had a place at the Lord’s Supper table as a child of God.

The author of Hebrews reminds us:

By faith Abraham obeyed when he was called to go out to a place that he was to receive as an inheritance. And he went out, not knowing where he was going. By faith he went to live in the land of promise, as in a foreign land, living in tents with Isaac and Jacob, heirs with him of the same promise. For he was looking forward to the city that has foundations, whose designer and builder is God.

Hebrews 11:8-10

My father’s body was shutting down. I was standing by the right side of his bed when my dad told me, “I want to go home–home.” I smiled at my father and asked, “So you want to go the house?” Dad looked at me and kindly said, “You know what I mean.” He explained that he missed my mother whom had died 17 years earlier and that he was tired. When I inquired if my father was at peace spiritually, he affirmed he was ready to go home.

Hebrews 11:13 states that Abraham “died in faith, not having received the things promised.” Abraham, my grandparents, and my father were “strangers and exiles on the earth” (Hebrews 11:13). These ancestors of faith taught me that “here we have no lasting city, but we seek the city that is to come” (Hebrews 13:14).

God is calling you to a place prepared especially for you (See John 14:1-4). Are you looking forward to living eternally with God? To paraphrase my father-in-law Jack Rankin, “You are closer to Heaven now than you have ever been.”

Today, I will…meditate on the place to which God calls me and ask Him to increase my desire for that heavenly city and to transform my life. I will list the ways I need to change and can serve the Lord until He calls me home.