I often remark to my students that home is the only place in the world you return to. All other places you go to … until you return HOME. We go to work; we go to shop; we even go on vacation. But the best vacation is the one with a home to return to.
I recall my first trip out of the US; it was to China when China was not yet a great go-to place. On my return, when the plane touched down at Detroit Metro, people clapped! (The day before, Pan Am 103 was blown out of the sky).
But at Detroit Metro, one of the most anonymous places in the country, even among airports! Regardless: when those tires touched the runway, we were home.
Sad is the person who has no home to return to. Sadder is the man who has houses and lands, but has no home to return to.
The first city ever built by sinful man was in the land of Nod, which the French jurist and philosopher Jacques Ellul translates “the land of no-where.” When man was evicted out of the Garden, he built a city … in no-where. That was how it began: the conflict between the City of Man and the City of God.
I have often wondered what the psalmist saw about the house of God that made him decide dwelling in it was the one thing he will ask God for. I used to think I could describe this house.
But the house has become out of focus for me. I’m noticing the camera lens of my understanding is too small to take it all in. I am in need of a wide-angle lens. The widest angle possible. The widest angle imaginable.
It at least includes the cattle upon a thousand hills. It at least encompasses the sands of the sea and the stars of heaven: joyous ones as far as the eye can see.
Logos2Go
Psalm 27.4 One thing I asked of the LORD, that will I seek after: to live in the house of the LORD all the days of my life, to behold the beauty of the LORD, and to inquire in his temple.
Jacques Ellul, The Meaning of the City, Grand Rapids: Eerdmanns, 1970, 1.
Psalm 50.10 For every beast of the forest is mine; the cattle upon a thousand hills.
Genesis 22.17 I will surely bless you, and I will surely multiply your offspring as the stars of heaven and as the sand that is on the seashore …
Genesis 26.4 I will multiply your offspring as the stars of heaven and will give to your offspring all these lands. And in your offspring all the nations of the earth shall be blessed …
1 comments:
Psalm 27:4 provides the opening sentences of a daily morning prayer I've been using for a few years. Reference to "His temple" sometimes leads me to wonder about the new covenant implications of Jesus' body being the temple (Jn 2:21), and my body being the temple of the Holy Spirit (1 Cor 6:19). "... IN HIS TEMPLE!" How much of our final home will "house"--facilitate fellowship, as a home does--us resurrected relating with our resurrected Lord?
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