February 18, 2019 – John 14:2

In my Father’s house are many rooms; if it were not so, I would have told you.
—John 14:2

Change in things around us is like fixity to the change that is in ourselves.19 Old times are gone, old interests, old aims; the haunts, the friends, the faces of our youth—where are they? Gone, or so changed that we dare not think to recall them. Or, if we try, we cannot; they are so different, so far away they are shadows, like things in a dream. And we are changing within. There are few who can say the spring leaves are as green, the flowers as sweet, the summer days as long and sunny, the heart as open and free from distrust as when life was young.
There is indeed compensation for this, if we will seek it. If we have a home in God through Christ, it brings in something better than youthful brightness, the taste of which is like the wine of Christ’s higher feast that makes the guests say, “The new is better.”
But here, too, there is frequently change. The anchor of our hope loses its hold, our sense of pardon and peace may be broken, and the face of God may look dim and distant. The disciples who were in fellowship with Christ at the close of the week were, before another, scattered or hopelessly seeking him in his grave.
It is from such changes that the promise of Christ carries us. The permanence of the dwelling will ensure permanence in all that belongs to the dwellers in it, otherwise the home and the inhabitants would be out of harmony. There will be no wavering of faith, no waning of hope, no chill of love.
Here, change leaves some lost good behind it; there, change will take all its good things forward into fuller possession. “There remains, then, a Sabbath-rest for the people of God.” We can rely on nothing else but his promise for the fulfillment of it. Sometimes it looks so strange, so unearthly, so utterly away from all the laws of nature and life as we see them here that it seems incredible. It is for faith, not for sight; for the trust of the heart, not for the telescope of science. Heaven is a state before it is a place. It is being in God, then with God. The locality will flow from the heart.
—John Ker