Forever Home

I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever.
—Psalm 23:6

There’s a natural watershed in our lives. We reach the top, stand for a moment, and then we’re over the hill. Everything is downhill from that moment on. But no matter; we’re headed for home.

Home—that’s where my heart is.

“I have come home at last!” shouted C. S. Lewis’s heaven-struck unicorn as he stamped his right forefoot on the ground. “I have come here at last! This is my real country! I belong here. This is the land I have been looking for all my life, though I never knew it until now. The reason why we loved the old Narnia is that it sometimes looked a little like this.”

It’s not that heaven is somewhat like home. It is home. Our earthly homes are mere signs or reflections—primitive symbols of warmth, love, togetherness, and familiarity. The ultimate reality is our Father’s house—where there is a father who never dies, who makes a home for the lonely, who treats us like family; where real love awaits us; where we’re included—“taken in.”

We hear about Odysseus, the Flying Dutchman, Frodo, and E.T., and we too want to go home—to that place where everything is impervious to change, where God will wipe every tear from our eyes, where everyone has a friend, where love will never end, where everything finally works out for good.

Everything goes wrong here; nothing will go wrong there. Nothing will be lost; nothing will be missing; nothing will fall apart or go down the drain. Heaven is God’s answer to Murphy’s Law.

Not all our hurts can be healed in this life. There are wounds we will bear all our lives, but, as a friend once said to me, “If you hold your wounds up to the sunlight of God’s love, they will never fester and in heaven they will be healed.” Some harm awaits heaven’s cure. That’s where, as C. S. Lewis said, that “great bleeding wound from which all of us suffer will be eternally healed.”

In this life we’re delivered from shame, guilt, and fear by God’s forgiving love; there is substantial improvement, but there’s no complete healing. We were born with broken hearts, and some sense of that brokenness will be with us throughout our days on earth. We’ll never quite be whole. There will always be some measure of inner pain that will co-exist with our joy and peace, some vague longing—“homesickness”—that will linger until we get home. We are satisfied here but never quite content.

One of these days we’ll go home, and then everything will be complete. Think of a place where there is no sin, no sorrow, no quarrels, no threats, no abandonment, no insecurity, no struggling with sagging self-worth. Heaven is where everything that makes us sad will be banished. We will be delivered from everything that has defiled or disrupted our lives.

It’s disturbing to look ahead and see the same impossible road stretching out in front of us, going on indefinitely. We’re driven to despair or rebellion when we think there’s no point to our misery and no end to it. That’s why we find comfort in the realization that it will not go on forever. One day everything that God has been doing will be done. He will come for us, and we will go home.

It may surprise you to know that David knew that much about heaven. Most folks who read the Old Testament never think to look for heaven there, but it occurs—in symbol and song, in metaphor and type. Ancient people took to analogy much better than we. They drew pictures: green pastures, Elysian Fields, light. One of the most convincing images is that of God Himself “taking us in.”

The thought occurs in the story of Enoch, who walked with God for three hundred years, and “then he was no more, because God took him away” (Genesis 5:24). Enoch and God took a walk one day and got too far from home. The old patriarch was too weary to walk all the way back, so God took him.

One of Israel’s singers saw himself and others as “destined for the grave,” but as he goes on to say,

God will redeem my life from the grave;
he will surely take me to himself (Psalm 49:15).

And then there’s the poet who learned God’s presence from his peril: “I am always with you,” he concluded. For now,

you hold me by my right hand.
You guide me with your counsel,
and afterward you will take me into glory (Psalm 73:23–26).

Taken in. I like that way of looking at my death. It reminds me of something Jesus said: “I am going there to prepare a place for you. And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come back and take you to be with me that you also may be where I am” (John 14:2–3).

That’s the fundamental revelation of heaven in both Testaments: being taken in, welcomed, received, embraced, and included. Death for God’s children is not bitter frustration but mere transition into a larger and permanent love—a love undisturbed by time, unmenaced by evil, unbroken by fear, unclouded by doubt.

All God’s idylls end favorably; all God’s children “live happily forever after.” That’s the most cherished article of my creed.

Never again will they hunger;
never again will they thirst.
The sun will not beat upon them,
nor any scorching heat.
For the Lamb at the center of the throne will be their shepherd;
he will lead them to springs of living water.
And God will wipe away every tear from their eyes (Revelation 7:16–17).

Taken from Seeing God, ©2006 by David Roper. Used by permission of Discovery House Publishers, Box 3566 Grand Rapids, MI 49501. All rights reserved.