Starbucks is one of my two favorite stores. The other is Hobby Lobby. I love Hobby Lobby. What a wonderful place. They have lamps and pictures and crafts and perfect little things that can make a house into a home. I mean, a house is just a house with walls, maybe some furniture, a couple of appliances. But when you really make it yours, with all of the pictures, signs, lamps, throws, and you can sit down on the couch or a favorite chair and feel cozy, that's when a house is finally a home. And Hobby Lobby just has so many things that are cozy.
The best is when they have the fall items on the shelves. Oh my, we're bringin in the harvest! That's good stuff. They have ceramic acorns and ceramic butternut squash. Plates with fall leaves on them. It's just a wonderland of Autumn. Fall is my favorite time of year. I love it when the house if fall-ish in decor, it's getting cool outside, but it's warm inside. Wonderful. But even with a good book and laying out in my blue, overstuffed chair by the window, it's not really good without a couple things: Jesus, my wife and daughter, and family.
Life with the Holy Spirit is wonderful. He is like this warm pool of joy that I can just slip into and find myself in a perfect place. He is my desert island and the one I love being stranded with. There's nothing like spending a whole day laying around in his arms. I find it so amazing though that God can be so jealous, even to the point that one of his names is "Jealous" (Exodus 34:14) and joyfully demand be to be a slave to his righteousness and his heart and pursing him, but give me my wife to love and adore as he loves and adores me. That's incredible that he loves me so much that he gave me her to be one with and yet he is so incredibly jealous of me at the same time. Now that's love.
A perfect day for me is laying around with Jesus and my wife, playing with our daughter, and letting the day pass us by - also called weekends at our house. But I can just imagine what weekends will be like in the Father's house! :) Before Jesus was about to be crucified he said,
"Do not let your hearts be troubled...In my Father's house are many rooms; if it were not so, I would have told you. 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. You know the way to the place I am going." John 14:1-4 NIV
This is such a rich thing for our God to say to us. That new feeling, the feeling of planning a new home and shopping for it and knowing how cozy the home will be after we buy this lamp and get that picture and do our cross wall, that's what Jesus is feeling right now. Because every day he is putting together our home. He's thinking about the times we will have with him in eternity future. He's thinking about that time when we will be having popcorn and watching a play in the living room when all of a sudden it turns into an all out pillow fight/food fight/water gun fight/whatever! He's thinking about us snuggling close to him as he tells us a story by the fire on a wintry afternoon while the angels are making a turkey dinner with all the trimmings in the kitchen. He's longing for when we will have the pool party in the backyard, the entire family over to the house for Christmas, early morning breakfasts, doing our good work that we image him through in the office. He's also thinking about how his orphaned children in this world won't be orphaned but will be right in the middle of our family in the Father's house. And how the outsiders today, will be the ones on the sofa with him inside his house. Jesus said we know the place where he is going. We know it in our hearts. It's the heaven that he's made for us, and left us an impression with so that we can follow the Spirit home.
Jesus doesn't just want us around a throne paying him homage for all time. He wants our love, passion, desire, creativity, thoughts, needs, wants; he wants everything about us. And when we do that, we are truly worshiping him. He wants us in his Father's house as his beloved, betrothed to him, letting us live in his cozy home to worship him as we live forever with him. How can it get any better than that?
Hope in Jesus is our mechanism for survival. In Acts Jesus' is called by the name The Way (Acts 19:33). He is The Way for us to not let our hearts be troubled. This world is nihilistic and doomed to a slow, thermodynamic death. Our life is in the Holy Spirit. We have to cast off everything that tries to pull us away from the heart of Jesus. When I'm removed from his heart in my mind and heart, I am going down fast. School and work can be so hard, but the thing I am in the process of learning is just to rest in Jesus when I am on shaky ground and not certain if I can stay near him, or if I even want to. Resting in knowing that he is God and he is enough.
Psalm 131:2 - I have stilled and quieted my soul; like a weaned child with its mother, like a weaned child is my soul within me.
David knew that our souls and hearts may be crying out (or rather demanding) for God to satiate us immediately with his Spirit. Sometimes he doesn't, other times we are trapped in busyness and it takes time to rekindle intimacy with Jesus. In any case, we shouldn't be troubled or anxious. He is near to us and he is preparing a place for us to be with him. He is here and moving deeply in us and the world. And thankfully we have found ourselves in a love affair with a God who said, I will never leave you nor forsake you.
He is truly ours forever.
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