these are days of decision. we want to buy a place to live, our first home.
so here i go again: fervently, panic-ly looking to God to find some sure answer, some sign. i want God to tell us what to do. the same type of seeking happened when i chose a college, when getting married, and when my husband made his “match list” at the end of his medical school. such big choices involve lots of money, time and long-term consequences. they cause a level of panic in me. christian cliches come to mind. i don’t want to “go outside of God’s will” or miss his blessing, or “lean on my own understanding.” i want to “follow peace.” i want to sift the desires in my heart. i want to be wise. but immaturity spills out as fear sets in. i just want God to tell us what to do!
in the old testament, before a long list of instructions about owning property, God says that land is not to be sold permanently because it belongs to Him. he explains further in this statement,”…for you are {but} aliens and sojourners with Me…” (leviticus 25.23).
how beautiful to take those words into my soul for what they really mean. there’s such a huge desire in me for a home. ever since my parents divorced when i was four, and having gone back and forth between two separate, competing “homes,” i never felt at home. i felt split. when i got out on my own, there wasn’t a place for me to really go back to either, “home” kind of evaporated. i never knew what a stable home was supposed to be like. so, home became an other-worldly spiritual place of rest and unity, an imagined place i desired so badly that it seemed at times, this desire for HOME opened up in me, and i just needed, so deeply. sometimes i just wanted to quit life, just to go “home.” so this desire, it’s such a big, wide, gaping desire. the very word home is loaded.
now, amazingly we are “building our house,” while setting our hearts on that spiritual home. i am being blessed with what i never had before, with more than i dreamed. we live as sojourners, renters. God’s ancient words about sojourning with him really pierce my soul. when it comes to this harsh world of divorce and property rights and government interference into the matters and finances of Home, i SO feel like an alien. the realities of this world offend me. just the other day, i was discussing with my dear friend the constant conversation of our home, the “pilgrim” lifestyle we as children of God are having to adopt in these times of compound interest and high-speed salesman tactics, debt. not that we all have to take a vow of poverty, but rather it’s all too easy for the cares of this world choke what God has planted in his children. we try to make choices to prevent that happening. nevertheless, we do have debt, and nevertheless, we didn’t end up living anywhere on that much prayed-over match list. since what we plan and dream is often not what happens, and since God plans/allows things so mysteriously and unpredictably for his glory, what does it really mean to fully obey God in this decision to buy a home? there are so many rules and guidelines the ancient hebrews followed: laws of redemption for pastureland, houses, family, and authority for heads of households. the new testament christians and missionaries lived homeless-like, sharing resources much the same way as the hebrews, as a spiritual family. these words from joshua 24 set out this ultimate choice: “If it is disagreeable in your sight to serve the LORD, choose for yourselves today whom you will serve: whether the gods which your fathers served which were beyond the River, or the gods of the Amorites in whose land you are living; but as for me and my house, we will serve the LORD.”
there it is. there is the choice.
so i continue to pray, but it takes the Spirit of the Lord to point out my motivations for panic and fear, to show me how to even ask the questions for directions. don’t you think i’d have learned by now that obedience is not a formula or simply following sets of instructions, it is a condition of my heart, at that deepest level of need. after all the things that haven’t “gone as planned?” in life, you’d think i would have learned! thank God He has my heart. thank God he has our future. may we bless the Lord for his provision, for his patience. may we bless him for his grace. may we trust from our hearts. this morning i pray for peace IN what we do, not just the feeling for what we should do. i’m still open, wondering, and there are no signs from heaven yet. but my heart is touched by the One who matters.
may your heart be touched as well.
