The Longing for Home, Part 1

Let me ask you. What do you do about the ache within you? What do you do with just that ache? You're sitting in a coffee shop surrounded by people, but nobody actually knows you. You're scrolling through social media at midnight, everyone's highlight reel, yet you feel unseen. You moved into a new apartment and you don't know your neighbor's names. That new apartment's now two, three years old, you still don't know their name and they don't know yours. You're in back to back Zoom calls all day long and not one person ask, how are you doing? There's a quiet ache under all the noise, a restlessness.

We live in a world in a day and age where we're more connected than ever, yet some we are more alone. Packed calendars, endless scrolling, and yet the ache remains. I'd like to suggest to you, what if your longing isn't a problem to fix, but a sign pointing you home? What if that ache is there for a purpose? C. S. Lewis in the classic Mere Christianity writes this, “Our lifelong nostalgia, lifelong nostalgia - our longing to be reunited with something in the universe from which we feel cut off to be on the inside of some door, which we have always seen from the outside, is no mere neurotic, fancy, but the truest in index of our real situation.”

The truth is, we're all spiritually homesick, aren't we? We all carry with us this ache. No matter what kind of home we grew up in, we have a longing for some idea of home.

Tim Keller writes this about home. Home is a powerful but elusive concept. The strong feelings that surround it reveal some deep longing within us for a place that absolutely fits and suits us. Where we can be or perhaps find our true selves. Yet, it seems no real place or actual family ever satisfies these yearning, though many situations arouse them. And so we live with this ache, this longing, a spiritual homesickness.

In Genesis 2, we find the original home for humanity. The place God made for humanity's flourishing. Genesis 2:4 says, this is the account of the Heavens and the Earth when they were created, when the Lord God made the Earth and the Heavens. Now, Genesis 1 is the macro vision of how God created everything and why it all matters. Genesis 2, we zoom into the creation of humanity. Verse 5. Now no shrub had yet appeared on the earth and no planet had yet sprung up for the Lord had not sent rain on the Earth and there was no one to work the ground, but streams came up from the Earth and watered the whole surface of the ground.

Then the Lord God formed a man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living being. Now the Lord God had planted a garden in the east in Eden, and there he put the man he had formed. The Lord God made all kinds of trees grow out of the ground. Trees that were pleasing to the eye and good for food in the middle of the garden were the Tree of Life and the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil.

Verse 10. A river watering the garden flowed from Eden. From there it was separated into four headwaters. The name of the first is the Pishon. It winds through the entire land of Havilah where there was gold. The gold of that land is good, which I generally think is gold is good. Thank you. Aromatic, resin and onyx are there also. The name of the Second River is the Gihon, it winds through the entire land of Kush. The name of the third river is the Tigris it runs along the east side of Ashur. And the fourth river is the Euphrates.

The Lord God took man and put him in the Garden of Eden to work it and to care for it. And the Lord God commanded the man you are free to eat from any tree in the Garden, but you must not eat from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil for when you eat it. From it, you will certainly die. The Lord God said, it is not good for the man to be alone. I'll make a helper suitable for him. Now, the Lord formed, out of the ground, all the wild animals, all the birds in the sky. He brought them to the man to see what he would name 'em, and whatever the man called each living creature that was its name. So the man gave names to all the livestock, the birds in the sky, and all the wild animals.

But for Adam, no suitable helper was found. So the Lord God caused the man to fall into deep sleep, and while he was sleeping, he took one of man's ribs and closed up the place with flesh. Then the Lord God made a woman from the rib and he had taken out of the man and he brought her to the man. Then the man said, this is now bone on my bone, flesh in my flesh. She shall be called woman for she was taken out of man. That is why a man leaves his father and mother and is united to his wife and they become one flesh. Adam and his wife were both naked and they felt no shame.

What do you do about the ache within you? And what if the longing isn't a problem to fix, but a sign pointing you home? In Genesis 2, we come across four aches. Four signposts returning us to our original home, the home we are truly made for. The first thing I want you to notice is the heart aches for permanence. The heart aches for permanence. We live in a transient, ever changing world, fast paced, nonstop. We move more than any other time in human history. In fact, millennials and Gen Z move than any previous generation. The average millennial moves every two years. Psychologists say of this time and age that there is a rootlessness, a constant sense of disconnection leading to anxiety and depression.

We swap cities, careers, communities, hoping the next one will finally be it. The heart aches for permanence. We do this relationally. Love immediately wants it to be permanent, doesn't it? Like when you, you start to fall in love, you want to love forever. In fact, we do this with friendships. It's a BFF, it's best friends. Forever. In fact, we even do this with homes, it's like that's a starter home, but that's not my forever home.

Why? Because the heart, we have this aching in a fleeting world that passes by where the sands, are shifting underneath us, and we feel uncertain, unstable, we long for permanence. In Genesis two, eight says, now the Lord God had planted a garden in the east in Eden, and there he put the man he had formed. See, God created a place of perfection for humanity to flourish with him forever. This was the intended space for flourishing, for humanity, for all time in the presence of God in perfection. We're made, by the way, for a home that lasts. We were made for a home that last.

Eden was more than a location. It was a reality where everything was right. No loneliness, no shame, no striving life with God full and flourishing. We were created to walk with God in the cool of the day, to work, to cultivate the earth without toil to live in deep unbroken relationships. It was home of the truest sense.

I like how Ronald Rolheiser in Sacred Fire says it. We all want at the end of the day is home. Ease. Rest, someone to be comfortable with some place to be comfortable in a home. Eternal rest, deeper than our wonder loss and desire for adventure is the desire to find our way back home. Ultimately, we want adventure only so that we can savor it and tell it around the fireplace. The older I get, the stronger my ache for permanence grows. 'Cause the more I see how fleeting life is, how fast things go.

This last, weekend, my family and I, we got to go to the snow. We hadn't been to the snow in three years. We picked the one weekend, there was a blizzard, it was fantastic and scary all at the same time. We get up there Thursday, Friday, like four feet of snow had dumped. We're trying to snowboard it. It, I've never been out there like this before, by the way, I mean, you couldn't see at times you know, 40, 50 feet in front of you. You're on the ski lift, the wind is whipping your face, the snow's hitting you. It's frigid cold.

That night, my brother and I are sitting on a couch. And, you know, one of my favorite features about the phone, at least the iPhone. I don't know about you Android people. Is I get these memories that pop up on my photos. No lie, I've been in a coffee shop with a memory pop up and I just start bawling. I'm just like, oh my gosh, look at my kids. And so I'm sitting with my brother and a memory pops up. And it was a family photo with our entire, my side of the Ingram family and I just look at, it was 13 years ago on that day.

We're taking this photo and seeing 13 years ago, the ages of all of our kids and our families. And I pass it over to my brother and he's like, no way. And we're like on the verge of bawling and then he's showing everybody else. But it just reminds us that life's fleeting. Even the very best moments of our lives, those moments that you try to capture that feel like, oh, that might've been it, that was home. It's only a picture now. It's a memory. It's a thing you revisit in your mind and the emotions come back, but you can't quite hold onto it, can you? 'cause the heart aches for permanence.

And then Jesus reminds us of something so powerful and profound, and it's his, some of His final words to His disciples before He's to go to the cross. He says, let not your heart be troubled. And then he gives them this beautiful promise. My father's house has many rooms. You want to talk about home? Let's talk about my dad's home. My father's house has many rooms. If that were not so, I would not have told you that. I'm going there to prepare a place for you.

Like I want you to know that on this planet where you're traveling, there's a reason it doesn't feel fully like home. Like you get glimpses of it, but it's not home. But I'm actually going to prepare a home for you that is full and final and secure and eternal. 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. Our hearts ache for permanence. And part of that ache points us to the reality is we are created and designed for a home that lasts, we are actually created for Eden. We are created for the Garden, and we live in the disrupted in between. And Jesus said, I came to restore that and I want to bring you back home forever.

And then there's the ache that are heartaches for presence. We ache for presence. Experts say that we live in what's called a loneliness epidemic. 50% of adults in America report to experiencing acute loneliness - half of our population. The Surgeon Generals says that this is actually a health crisis and the impact on our health of loneliness has a similar impact as if you're smoking 15 cigarettes a day. The heart aches for presence, and we live in a day and age where we're constantly connected and we have the illusion of relationship, and yet we live in isolation, in loneliness. Genesis 2:7 says The Lord God formed a man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living being.

Our deepest desire is to be fully known and fully loved. Our greatest fear is to be fully known and rejected. It. And so we hide, we curate, we cover up what is deemed unlovely so that it will be accepted in some form, but we're never fully known. And then God breathed. The Hebrew word carries intimacy. There's no distant decree, cosmic snap of a finger. This was touch, intentionality, nearness. God formed humanity like an artist shaping clay with bare hands, tender and presence.

And then did you notice like all that talk about rivers? What is that about? See what this biblical text describing is the way the royal palace would design the garden. They would always design it around a spring welling up that would pour out and water the garden and the grounds. So the Garden of Eden wasn't just a place for humanity, it was the King's residence. It was God's residence and presence. It is like you were designed and hardwired to live and be at home in the residence of the king, in his presence. We were made to be with God and with each other. You are hardwired. Our hearts desperately long for the with-ness.

You know, friends are rare these days, not because they've diminished importance, but because we've increased in speed. We fill our lives with noise, screen and schedules, but what we crave is real embodied presence and the entire arc of the Bible is all about restoring the presence we lost in Eden, like we were created to walk with God in the cool of the day. The with-ness. And so the entire arc of the Bible moves us that direction of intimacy and presence lost and God working His way to be the "with us God". I mean, we sing the songs about Emmanuel at Christmas time. Guess what? That's true. Not just then. It's true all year long, Like there would be one who comes, that is God with us. That has been God's heart and longing from the beginning. And Jesus steps into history fully God, fully man - with us.