I am sure that I wrote about this a few years ago, but I have been thinking about it again and thought I would write more now. If you didn’t know my parents died when I was young and so I lived with my grandmother, but my adult cousin Brenda was a big part of making sure that I grew up into the man I am now. Well, before my nephew was born Brenda asked if she could adopt me and my sister so that our children would be her grandchildren.
I have to tell you it is cool to be a grown man and be adopted.
But anyway, one of the coolest things that Brenda ever did for us was to build in the back porch of her house to be our room. Now when we come home we have a place that we can call our own. There is just something nice about having a place that you can call home. You may have experienced something similar, maybe your parents passed away and you sold their house, or maybe they just decided to retire and live out of a camper, but there is something missing when you don’t have a place that is “home.”
No matter how long you live somewhere else, it is always nice to know that someone has a room waiting for you and a place that you can go and be at home.
That is why I think it is so cool that Jesus said, “I go to prepare a place for you.” Basically what he is saying is that he is going to get us a room ready. No matter how alone you feel, no matter how lost or far from home, no matter how much this world makes you feel disconnected and searching for home, you can know that God has a place prepared for you and a room you can call your own.
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After years of emphasizing the "sweet by and by" aspect of heaven (you know, saying that eternal life is something that’ll start later), I’ve been trying more to see how we can get a taste (a glimpse, a touch) of heaven now. So while what you describe is a comfort, help me think of how someone would draw the reality of that prepared place of someday into my life of here and now. You know, in the same way communion does for Jesus’ death and resurrection.
Thank you for the post. It ministered to me today in ways I can’t explain. I needed this today.
In a similar way just the whole concept of adoption is cool. When you adopt someone you are saying to them "I choose you". There is something so powerful about that. Jesus was God’s way of saying "I choose you". We are adopted into God’s family. Jesus even used that sort of language when talking about the holy spirit. He said, "I will not leave you as orphans I will come for you."
So eternal life is like being picked, and not picked because you were the last one left, but picked because God wants you to be a part of his family. Eternal life=eternally chosen.