Home Is Coming

If you can name all four of your grandparents, you know more about your ancestry than one third of Americans. But what about your great grandparents? Can you name all eight of them? Can you name your sixteen great great grandparents? 
Realistically, the average person will be completely forgotten in three to four generations. Sobering, isn’t it? We invest boundless energy into building a life – we work, pray, parent, exercise, dream, create, buy, sell. But to what end? 

In Ecclesiastes 1 King Solomon laments, “What do people gain from all their labors at which they toil under the sun? Generations come and generations go…No one remembers the former generations, and even those yet to come will not be remembered by those who follow them” (Ecclesiastes 1:3, 11). He concludes: “I have seen all the things that are done under the sun; all of them are meaningless, a chasing after the wind” (Ecclesiastes 1:14).

Can you imagine that verse on a Hobby Lobby sign? It would sell for $1.50 in the clearance aisle. No one wants to think about the transience of life. Yet the wisest man who ever lived (I Kings 3:12) said, “Everything is meaningless, a chasing after the wind.” 
In any other year, such a sentiment may have sounded extreme. But this is 2020. In light of everything we’ve experienced individually and corporately, Solomon’s words resonate with fresh insight. This is what I hear him saying: 

It’s okay if this world feels inadequate. 
It’s okay if life disappoints.
You don’t have to find ultimate joy here.
You don’t have to build a kingdom for yourself.
All of that is meaningless, because home isn’t here.

Home is coming.

This Advent, we find ourselves in the unique position of being able to relate to the Israelites like never before. Amid the holiday bustle, it’s easy to imagine that once upon a time people waited for the Messiah the way a child waits for an Amazon package – with gleeful excitement. The reality is, they waited with desperation, longing, and suffering. 

The Israelites didn’t live in Mayberry. They lived under the tyranny of broken and corrupt systems, and as such, they were a people acquainted with unrest, sorrow, and anxiety. The cultural blinders of peace and prosperity had been ripped from their eyes, and so they awaited a Savior. 

Truly, the only people who long for a Savior are people who realize they need saving. This is the backdrop for Advent. The word itself is derived from the Latin adventus, which simply means “coming” or “arrival.” For centuries the Jewish nation waited for the arrival of their Messiah. 

Later, in the first century, Christians began to recreate the feeling of anticipation for Christ with purposeful prayer, fasting, and repentance as they focused attention not on the birth of Jesus, but on His second coming. They used the season to prepare them for Epiphany, a Christian celebration in early January, commemorating the manifestation of Christ to the Gentiles/Magi.
Just as generations of Jews waited with delayed hope, these Christians wanted to remind themselves that life is short, this world is temporal, and the Savior will one day return. By the Middle Ages, Christians had begun using Advent to prepare to celebrate Christ’s birth, and yet it retained the longing for the second coming as well. Thus, worshippers mingled the penitential preparation for the Christ’s return with the joyous anticipation of Jesus’ birthday.

And so we continue in this tradition today. Excitement. Joy. Celebration. The Savior has come and with Him, our salvation. Anticipation. Longing. Hope. The Savior will come again, and with Him, the restoration of all things. 

This Advent, look forward. Ask God to orient your heart toward your true home. For when the destination is sure, the journey is peaceful. Uphill at times? Yes. Difficult? Without a doubt. But as we fix our affections on the Savior, we will walk with supernatural strength and abiding peace. We will walk with Jesus. 
All the way home.