Longing for Heaven
Merry Monday by Parris Bailey
Phil. 3:20 “For our citizenship is in heaven, from which we eagerly wait for the Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ.”
Have you let go yet? I’m sure my age has a lot to do with it, raising four kids and pastoring for over 32 years. Don’t get me wrong it was all wonderful, after all I really never expected nor dreamed my life would be so fulfilling and complete. I think I’m truly Cinderella, meeting her knight in shining armor (Jesus and Frank). But laying all of that aside (even my precious grandchildren) I yearn for something more. Oh let me not forget to tell you about my 1929 French stucco house and my beautiful antiques with my painting of “Saul on the Damascus Road”? On top of all that beautifulness I have three hysterical dogs that keep Frank and I obsessing over them, yet even then I yearn for something more.
I found this quote that hits the spot with how I feel by Spurgeon.
“We may hunt the world through, and say, ‘This looks like a little paradise,” but there is no paradise this side of the skies – for a child of God at any rate. There is enough out there in the farmyard for the hogs, but there is not for the children. There is enough in the world for sinners, but there is not for saints. They have stronger, sharper, and more vehement desires, for they have a nobler life within them, and they desire a better country; and even if they get entangled for a while in this country, and in a certain measure become citizens of it, they are still uneasy; their citizenship is in heaven, and they cannot rest anywhere but there. After all, we confess tonight, and rejoice in the confessions, that our best hopes are for things that are out of sight. Our expectations are our largest possessions. The things that we have, that we value, are ours today by faith. We don’t enjoy them yet, but when our heirship shall be fully manifested, and we shall come to the full ripe age, oh! then we shall come into our wealth, to the mansions and to the glory and to the presence of Jesus Christ our Lord. So, then, you see the reason why the Christian cannot go back, though he has many opportunities, lies in this, that through divine grace he has had produced in his heart desires for something better, and even when he does not as yet enjoy that something better, the desires themselves become mighty bonds that keep him from returning to what he was. Dear brethren, cultivate these desires more and more.”
Blessings—