{"id":1559,"date":"2016-03-23T15:46:16","date_gmt":"2016-03-23T20:46:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/annswindell.com\/staging\/?p=1559"},"modified":"2016-04-18T15:47:01","modified_gmt":"2016-04-18T20:47:01","slug":"aching-for-home","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/annswindell.com\/staging\/2016\/03\/23\/aching-for-home\/","title":{"rendered":"Aching for Home"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"THE<\/a><\/p>\n

This past summer, our family moved to a new city, and into a new life.<\/strong>\u00a0<\/em>And in the midst of the transitions and changes that the last year has brought our way, I have thought about the feeling, the idea, and the desire\u00a0for home.<\/em><\/p>\n

Two years ago during Holy Week, I reflected on that same thing–that\u00a0ache for home that so many of us feel. And in light of Easter, and I wanted to share those thoughts\u00a0with you again here in this space:<\/em><\/p>\n

I love traveling;\u00a0Michael and I love traveling together, exploring new places, and learning about the world. But when it comes down to it, I am a homebody at heart, and I love having consistency in my life. \u00a0In fact, one of the\u00a0sweetest things about traveling, for this homebody, is the longing that develops in me when I am away from home. There is a familiar ache that bubbles up, whether I am in Wisconsin, Florida, or England\u2014the ache for a place where I know the corners of the rooms, the ache for a place where the walls and bed and blankets are familiar, loved, home<\/i>.<\/strong><\/p>\nEaster is about Jesus making a way for us to be able to enter the eternal Home that we were created for. <\/a><\/span>Share on X<\/a><\/span>\n

My mother and I traveled to\u00a0Grand Rapids for a conference, and while we were there, my mother drove us past her childhood home, her elementary school, and her family\u2019s church.\u00a0 My grandpa was a Methodist minister, and so she moved several times as a child, but it was in this city that she started going to school, and her memories of Grand Rapids are vivid. I loved seeing bits of her life through these buildings\u2014the house where she lived, the steps she climbed on her first day of kindergarten, the steeple of the church where my grandfather preached. And although those places were not mine, I felt that old ache flutter again.<\/strong><\/p>\n

C.S. Lewis has written about this ache. In \u201cThe Weight of Glory,\u201d he writes,<\/p>\n

These things\u2014the beauty, the memory of our own past\u2014are good images of what we really desire; but if they are mistaken for the thing itself they turn into dumb idols, breaking the hearts of their worshippers. For they are not the thing itself; they are only the scent of a flower we have not found, the echo of a tune we have not heard, news from a country we have never yet visited.<\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cNews from a country we have never yet visited.\u201d<\/p>\n

Home.<\/em><\/p>\n

Easter, which we are looking toward, is about many things. But in one sense, it is about home. It is about Jesus making a way for us to be able to enter the eternal Home that we were created for. It is that country we keep hearing news from\u2014that ache that bubbles up, that longing that draws us to beauty and goodness and light. The desire\u00a0for wholeness, and freedom, and perfection\u2014the ache for heaven. Jesus is the only one who could become the doorway for us to that Home.<\/strong> His body, broken and torn on the cross, became the doorway that allows us to enter in and walk into right relationship with God. And through the doorframe of that empty tomb\u2013his resurrection\u2013we get to enter into that heavenly home with him, forever.<\/p>\n

He crossed the threshold from death to life and held the door open for us, too.<\/strong><\/p>\nJesus crossed the threshold from death to life and held the door open for us, too. #Christianity <\/a><\/span>Share on X<\/a><\/span>\n

Home. It is what we long for, ache for, desire. This Easter, we can remember afresh that because of the great cost Christ paid for us on the cross, and because of the great miracle of his resurrection, we have an answer to all of the aching and longing that we find in our own hearts.<\/p>\n

We can remember that we have found our truest home\u2014in Him.<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This past summer, our family moved to a new city, and into a new life.\u00a0And in the midst of the transitions and changes that the last year has brought our way, I have thought about the feeling, the idea, and the desire\u00a0for home. Two years ago during Holy Week, I reflected on that same thing–that\u00a0ache […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1560,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[789,791,409,792,410,788,790,52,491,793,794,183],"class_list":["post-1559","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-aching-for-home","tag-can-i-go-home","tag-easter","tag-faith-in-jesus","tag-good-friday","tag-home","tag-i-want-to-go-home","tag-jesus","tag-jesus-is-enough","tag-jesus-is-home","tag-jesus-is-our-home","tag-my-soul-is-tired","entry"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/annswindell.com\/staging\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/03\/THE-ACHE.jpg?fit=800%2C1200&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/annswindell.com\/staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1559","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/annswindell.com\/staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/annswindell.com\/staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/annswindell.com\/staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/annswindell.com\/staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1559"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/annswindell.com\/staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1559\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1576,"href":"https:\/\/annswindell.com\/staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1559\/revisions\/1576"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/annswindell.com\/staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1560"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/annswindell.com\/staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1559"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/annswindell.com\/staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1559"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/annswindell.com\/staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1559"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}