House

It is quite extraordinary, but as I write our new tenants are living in our house. It’s extraordinary because at Christmas we hadn’t really thought a great deal about looking at houses, let alone done much thinking as to if, and how, we might buy one. Yet here we are, less than four months after looking at this particular house, having welcomed our tenants in by leaving them chocolates and bubbly in the new fridge! By any stretch it is extraordinary. We, however, will not live in the house ourselves for at least seven years as far as we can tell. We can’t afford to. To live in it, we have to wait. We know it’s there, but we’re not there yet. Not yet. Things don’t always go to plan in this life, but, we are hoping that in seven years time, we will live in our house. There’s another house that is being prepared for me. It’s a house that I don’t yet live in. But, like the house I now own in Crawley, it’s there waiting for me. And one day I will live in the house. That’s a promise. It’s not a promise I made, but a promise that’s been made to me: “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 14:3) Jesus made that promise to me. And to you. It’s the promise that one day I will go to be with my heavenly Father and be with him in his house! I’m not there yet, but I will be. Songwriter David Meece says it this way:
Sometimes at night I dream of a throne
Of my loving God, calling me home
And as I appear, He rises and smiles
And reaches with love to welcome His child
Never to cry, never to fear
In His arms, safe and secure.

My father's chair sits in a loving room
My father's chair, no matter what I do
My father's chair, through all the years
And all the tears I need not fear
Love's always there in my father's chair.

That’s my house! But here’s the thing: we only have a house in Crawley because my mum died and we inherited from her estate. My mum only had a house because my Dad died suddenly and unexpectedly when he was young and three months after his best friend had persuaded him to take out a life insurance policy. He was a Vicar and they had no house of their own! I hope one day to live in the house in Crawley. But the bigger and far better story is that I have a house waiting for me in heaven because of another death. Jesus died and rose again, as we remembered just last Sunday and his death means I have a place in my Father’s house. And that is the most important story. It is the story of my eternal destiny. And I’m really looking forward to a family reunion, in my Father’s house!