It's the morning after I write about Home and my body, it's fighting off sleep, trying to open eyes to a new day. That's when the music on the bedside table makes its way right into my dreams and suddenly I'm wide awake.
Because who wants to keep dreaming when God's got something to say?
The new year, it's days away from beginning when I hear these words, but God, He's not waiting another minute to pour out Himself on this woman who's yearning to find her Home in Him. And maybe there are still a thousand things I don't understand about the One Who is Home, but maybe He's already ripped the veil over the only one that really matters....I'm lost and found
I'm saved and drowned
I'm everything and nothing all at onceI'm so far gone
but I'm already home
With everything and nothing but Your love...
God is Home because God is Love. Yes, Love is our Home.
And I wonder how it is that all these years I've read words so familiar and yet never known what they meant. Because the Apostle Paul writes it over and over that without Love, we are nothing, we have nothing, we gain nothing.
Why did I not see it before that what he's really saying is this--with Love, we are everything, we have everything, we gain everything?
When we've got nothing at all to our names but His Love, we have everything.
And this is the moment when the mystery takes on skin and I know why I've been longing, aching, straining for Home. Because it's only been six months since I first laid the full weight of who I am against the full measure of His Love and found the one piece I'd been missing for a whole life.
The truth that I am loved. A thousand times over. By the One Who spoke me into being, the One Who is Love.
And this truth, it's already changed me inside and out, turned me into a woman I barely recognize. But He's still shaping me into His Glory and I'm still learning how to live loved. Because I spent 29-1/2 years not knowing the Love He's always carried me in and I can't even write those words without the ache raging wild for the girl I was before I knew. And these six months, they've been a different life than the one that came before, but I wonder if it takes every last one of these days we're given to fully settle into Him, settle into who we're meant to be, settle into being loved.
But maybe the settling begins right here with this one thing: God is Love and Love is Home.
Love is the roof that shelters us in every storm. Love is the walls that surround us when we feel utterly alone. Love is the light burning in the window when we need to find our way back in the dark. Love is the hearth fire thawing out our resistance, our cold-as-ice days, our fear-frozen hearts. Love is the dinner table laden with food, filling our starving souls with the only Bread Who Lives.
And the most beautiful, glorious, life-giving truth of all? Love is the Beloved Himself, tending to our wounded lives and our broken spirits, whispering comfort, courage, hope in our ears at every turn, inhabiting every last corner of this House of His Love.
Yes, Love is Home. And in this Love we're in, we are always, always at Home.
I might've spent long years yearning for a tangible place to call home, but who wants what can only be lost when there's a Home that can never be taken?
For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.
~Romans 8:38-39
And maybe I'll spend the whole rest of a life settling into this Home He's given--this Home He is--but maybe this life begins with just two words. The two words God's been waiting to speak over me since that day I found His Love.
Welcome Home.
two posts in one week--an unexpected treat! i liked the segue from hope to love. hope changes everything, because, when we are wandering in darkness, hope is the light by which we see the way Home. but, as you say, Love is Home Itself: when we have the fullness of Love and our Beloved, we'll no longer be wayfarers.
ReplyDeleteyour paragraph starting "Love is the roof..." is **wonderful**. "Love is the dinner table, laden with food, filling our starving souls with the only Bread Who Lives"...not for the first time, I find myself reading something you posted, and thinking: *that's* what i have to keep in my mind and in my heart, and live out every day. . .you are a gift!
"When we have the fullness of Love and our Beloved, we'll no longer be wayfarers." Yes! I think this is really the Hope that's driving me to settle into God as my Home, because I don't want to be a wayfarer anymore. Oh, what joy just *thinking* of not needing to be a wayfarer any longer.
DeleteAnd your words here? They brought tears when I read them. To be called a gift...there are no words to say thank you for that. May you, too, settle right into His Love and feast on the Bread of Life, the only One Who can satisfy all our longings.
Grace--much grace--to you, Friend!
Dear, beautiful Courtney, this is rhapsodical. Isn't it beautiful how His love to you overflows in this outpouring of love back to Him? I loved the bit about settling into Love. Some years ago I spent an autumn learning Romans 8 by heart. This post makes me want to revisit that just to saturate my mind with the Love transforming you so gloriously. May you abide in His love and Love in you today.
ReplyDelete@tinuviel: Thank you for Grace Words here, Friend! When I did a quick look up of "rhapsodical" I found this definition: Immoderately impassioned or enthusiastic. Yes! Those words could describe so much of my art and writing. I'm going to hold onto that for future use :o).
DeleteAnd what you are saying here brings this to mind: "We love Him because He first loved us..." I don't think I ever really understood that before now, this truth that we can't love until we've known His Love for us. And by extension, that once we have known His Love, there's nothing we can do to hold ourselves back from loving Him, too, however imperfectly it may be.
And, oh! There's no sweeter joy than to know that what I've written is drawing you straight back to His Love. *That* is pure Grace, pure God. May you rest in this House of His Love and find Him ever more faithful no matter the road you're on.