I’d like to think it’s just the Houston heat. Or being away from my husband. Or the lack of routine. But I think I’m just homesick. Or maybe it’s heart sick.

I love routine. I love sameness. I love clear purpose. I love my nest. Something about having our stuff in boxes or bags or a tractor trailer somewhere between South Carolina and southern California has stirred my heart up. And what it’s revealing isn’t pretty. Something about the exodus and God leading His people and providing His presence and His manna comes to heart and mind. Something about the way His people complained and lost heart and looked back feels too close to this heart this week.

Deuteronomy 8:2.
“You shall remember all the way which the Lord your God has led you in the wilderness that He might humble you, testing you, to know what was in your heart.”

And we are there. Restless, irritable, discouraged. Did I say irritable?

While wrestling this week with longings for a permanent address, a routine, a clear purpose, God has also graciously stirred up in me a deeper longing for my real home.

Stripped of my normal nest of twigs, I find myself longing for an abiding city, built by God, eternal in the Heavens.

Homesick

Will you esteem me more than
Worldly comfort,
And more weighty than
Your deepest sigh?
Will you stop grasping after
Significance,
And instead to my side
Draw nigh?

The infinity in Me more than matches
The eternity I set deep in your heart.
Come, hide in My presence.
Stay, never more to depart

Will you let me expose all
Rivals to Me,
And invite me into places
Where you hide?
Will you stop performing
Before Me,
And instead take your place
At My side?

The aching homesickness you feel
Is a compass to lead you to Me.
I long for you to taste more deeply,
I labor that more fully you’ll see.

Will you entrust your favorites
To Me,
And let Me wean you from
Your need to control?
Will you open to me your
Unnamed longings,
And let My fullness
make you whole?

Infinity necessitated the longing;
Incarnation took on the ache;
The Immanent Spirit imparts
A peace the world cannot shake.