March 19, 2019

As the deer pants for streams of water, so my soul pants for you, O God.
—Psalm 42:1
We often speak of heaven as our home, and in many senses that is true.48 If in heaven we will meet again those whom we loved and lost, and if boys and girls will be playing in the streets of Zion, I have no doubt that heaven will be a homelike place. But in deeper senses heaven is not our home, or if it is, it is just because God is there. In the deepest sense our home is not heaven, but God.

O God, our help in ages past,
Our hope for years to come,
Our shelter from the stormy blast,
And our eternal home.
—Isaac Watts

God is the true home of the human soul.
Craving for God is one of the strangest facts in human history. You would have thought that in a world like this, full of color, music, and delight, humanity would be content without God. But the book of Psalms is filled with that passionate craving. And if the book of Psalms has lived through chance and change, cherished when ten thousand volumes are forgotten, it is largely because it gives a voice to this unappeased hunger. We do not crave for God because he is glorious or because he is sovereign. We are homesick—that is the meaning of it. We crave for God because he is our home.
Now this homesickness of the soul for God is one of our surest proofs of God. It is an argument more powerful than any that philosophy affords to convince me that there is a God. No one denies that souls still pant for God. And hearts today and here still thirst for him, as truly as the exiled psalmist did. And there cannot be homesickness without a home. All other arguments may fail me. When my mind is wearied and my memory tired, I forget them. But this one, knit with my heart, part and parcel of my truest humanity, survives all moods, is strong when I am weak, and brings me to the door of God my home.
I will arise and go to my Father. Thank God we need no money for that journey. Is there no one here who has been far away who is going to come home—to God—this very hour?
—George H. Morrison

Wallis, Diana. Take Heart: Daily Devotions with the Church’s Great Preachers. Grand Rapids, MI: Kregel Publications, 2001. Print.