Have you ever felt like you were trying to get back home? The journey with Christ has led you in directions you never expected to find that even in the joy of it all, you miss an old home?

Paul gets it as his letters show us his deep heart desire to get back to those he loves. However, his mission did not allow for it. His honest writing with things like, “I will come back if it is God’s will” shows us a surrendered man who has had to choose Christ and the call over even his own personal desires.

Not every desire is from the Lord. After all, the heart wants what it wants. Sometimes, it just wants to go home. But our kind Jesus fully understands and is there to wrap us into His loving and safe heart.

Home, perhaps, is back to a season where you found great joy and delight when all seemed well and good before calamity hit and loss made a new lane for you to walk in.

Home maybe is when a loved one was still alive and your every step closer to Heaven reminds you of an approaching reunion of a heart you daily miss.

Home might be a place where God grew you and loved you through others but it it no longer the same.

Home could even be the use of a particular gifting that God used as primary in a past season but is now tucked in an arsenal of tools He pulls out as He pleases. It now feels secondary to what it used to be.

I have found myself, often, frustrated with myself at the longing for home. After all, God has been good and faithful indeed.

But in all honesty, I’ve had to sit with Him on many occasion and talk it through as He listened with gentle compassion for my heart cry.

If I had any advice for you who may have this same lingering feeling from time to time…don’t ignore it. Take it to Jesus. Let Him hear your aches and pains. He doesn’t mind.

Sometimes, I also believe the longing is that innate desire to be with the Father in Heaven. A pull that we do not understand but will when we arrive to our final Heavenly home with Christ.

In that very moment there will be no more longing, only fullness of joy.