A Home in Glory Land

I attended two funerals this week. In both and in most I’ve attended in my life, and in many obituaries I’ve read, I’ve heard and seen the phrase, “gone home to be with the Lord.” Why do we use home as a reference for heaven? God’s Old Testament people and many of God’s New Testament people lived in tents. Few people are at home in a tent. Tent dwellers are continually on the move. People who live in homes are at home, or at least as close as one can get in this life. Really the only earthly home we have is our body. At least that’s what Paul believed, but even then he wrote, “While we are at home in the body we are absent from the Lord” (2 Cor. 5:6). The old spiritual said it best, “This world is not my home; I’m just a passin’ through.” We’ve heard that you can’t go home again, but that all depends on where home is. If your earthly home is temporary – like your body is temporary – and your heavenly home is eternal, you can go home again. Indeed death is a home going . . . to be with the Lord . . . in the home he has prepared for us. I guess there was more theology than I knew in the songs I was taught as a child. “I’ve got a home in glory land . . .” How about you?

Join me in prayer this week for the following global concerns:
• Continue to pray for Olympic ministries. Seems China Olympic officials have failed to provide adequate Christian Chaplains inside the athletes’ village.
• As far as I know, all mission personnel are out of Georgia. Pray for them as they try to re-locate when their heart and their calling is back in Georgia, still under attack from the Russian army.
• Missionaries in Thailand are asking for prayer that God would give them wisdom as they develop evangelistic/discipleship materials.
• Pray for a missionary couple who have completed language study in Costa Rica and have now arrived in Argentina to minister.
• Pray for a Canadian pastor and wife who need another car since their three children are now in three different special schools in a large city.