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 Going
Home! Is there a more heart- warming thought? Poets,
song-writers, and story-tellers have played the full scale of
our emotions with this theme, but it can not be exhausted.
It
conjures up visions of warmth and safety, with mother and dad.
Long forgotten moments of joy, intimate corners in the attic
where we kept our childhood treasures, a swing beneath our
favorite tree — these flash through our memory like tiny bits
of honey — so sweet — so soon gone. Our head tells us the
past can never be recaptured, but our heart refuses to believe
it. Some day we will go home, and things will be exactly as we
have long remembered them. And even as we reprove our heart with
reality, we have tasted the sweet sorrow of the universal
longing for home.
The
“many mansions” of John 14:2 are incorrectly thought of as
palaces or one’s “gold (mansion) that is silver lined” —
as the song “Mansions Over the Hilltop” puts it. Scriptures
do describe the heavenly Jerusalem as a city of gold, whose
walls and foundation are precious stones — but never with the
crass materialism often shown in our use of such terms. Heaven’s
treasure is far richer than that which could be spent for
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possessions or fleshly gratifications. Its
beauty and value are represented to humans by human terminology
(how else?) yet it is the “abiding place” that Jesus
emphasizes. We will dwell there, and that spells HOME.
The
Greek none is only used in two places: Jn. 14:2, and 23. Bagster
says it means “a stay in any place.. .“ The word is from
meno, “remain, abide, tarry, continued presence.” it does
not describe the elaborateness of a house, as does “mansion”
in our current usage, but says “here you may no more
uncertainty, no more subject to day-to-day circumstances, no
more wondering, waiting, wishing. You may here abide, here
remain.
The
second use of the word (Jn. 14:23) is also significant. “If a
man love me, he will keep my words: and my father will love him,
and we will come unto him, and make our abode with him.” In
pagan philosophy the ultimate is to lose identity in nothingness
with the universe; but the child of God finds true identity in
his relationship with his Creator. He spends his earth-time in
faithful service, and confidently awaits the final home to be
with the Father.
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