How familiar with Heaven, how well acquainted with that "better land" must Jesus be! He calls it "My Father's home!" Sweet view of our eternal residence! Dying is but 'going home!' Going home to our Father! Going to our Father's home!
And shall we fear this? Fear it! Can we do anything other than eagerly desire it? Do we not wish to go home and see our Father? We shall not be strangers there so many of our Christian friends have gone home before us. And even if some of our loved ones are not there, we could not possibly feel unhappy where JESUS is!
"I am leaving the world," said Jesus, "and am going to My Father!" Such should be our language in the prospect of death. O that, with child-like simplicity, we could receive into our minds the testimony of God's Word! O that we could view death and Heaven just as the Scriptures represent them! Where would our doubts and fears be then? What would become of our reluctance to leave the world then? Then, if we spoke of departed Christian loved ones, we would use similar language to that of Judah in reference to his younger brother Benjamin, "He is this day with our Father!" We would no longer talk of losing friends or relatives. Oh no! we should speak of them as being in our Father's home, or of being with our Father!
My soul, I charge you in future to look to Heaven, simply as your Father's home!
[James Smith]
John 14:1-3 … Let not your heart be troubled: ye believe in God, believe also in me. In my Father's house are many mansions: if it were not so, I would have told you. I go to prepare a place for you. And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again, and receive you unto myself; that where I am, there ye may be also.
John 17:24 … Father, I will that they also, whom thou hast given me, be with me where I am; that they may behold my glory, which thou hast given me: for thou lovedst me before the foundation of the world.
2 Corinthians 4:16-18 … For which cause we faint not; but though our outward man perish, yet the inward man is renewed day by day. For our light affliction, which is but for a moment, worketh for us a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory; While we look not at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen: for the things which are seen are temporal; but the things which are not seen are eternal.❤
