My Forever Home
It’s been said that you can’t go home again. In the case of my childhood home, that’s an absolute fact. Why you ask? Well, because it’s been demolished…literally bulldozed to the ground.
For 7 years, during those formative years of kindergarten through sixth grade, I called it home. It wasn’t an extravagant house, just a simple 3-bedroom ranch, but it was ideally located on a quiet cul-de-sac with a large backyard that sat next to a not so insignificant creek. The other side of the creek housed the community pool and a modest park. Needless to say, I spent a lot of time as a kid outside. Whether it was riding bikes, exploring the creek with my brother and the neighborhood kids, swimming away the summer, or just playing in the backyard letting our imaginations run wild, that house was the source of some of my sweetest childhood memories.
As we got older, my family decided to move to a new house. Over the years, we’d still drive by the old one but each time we did my heart sunk a little because subsequent owners allowed it to fall into disrepair. There was even a fire one year and they rebuilt it with a slightly different floorplan. The not so insignificant creek, although a paradise for children’s summer adventure, was also a significant flooding hazard. While we never experienced flooding, many people in that neighborhood did. The county finally decided to buy up houses in the flood plain and one by one began to demolish them. In 2012, 18 years after I last called it home, the bulldozers came in and reduced it to a pile of rubble. I wasn’t there to actually see it happen, but I did drive by at certain points during the process. At one point, the only thing left standing was the back deck that I remember my dad building by hand.
It was a heartbreaking sight. However, there was comfort amidst the rubble as it provided a powerful reminder that this world does not contain my forever home. In John 14:1-3, Jesus speaks of something greater to come:
“Let not your hearts be troubled. Believe in God; believe also in me. In my Father’s house are many rooms. If it were not so, would I have told you that I go and prepare a place for you? And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and will take you to myself, that where I am you may be also.”
Additionally, Paul, in his letter to the Philippians, writes:
“But our citizenship is in heaven, and from it we await a Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ” ~ Philippians 3:20
It’s important to appreciate, enjoy, and steward well what he has provided here and now. However, we must remember that it’s not our forever home. For those that believe in him and call him Savior, Jesus himself is preparing a place that is beyond our wildest dreams. Unlike any home on earth, we will never ever have to stand by and watch it come to ruin.
