Are You Home Yet?

“I had planted you like a choice vine of sound and reliable stock. . .”
Jeremiah 2:21a (NIV)

Is there a place that beckons to you? Someplace that tugs at your heart? A place where you always feel at home? For me, that place is Lake Michigan. It captured my heart on the day I was born.

I was just hours old when my parents brought me home from the hospital in a February snowstorm. I imagine that as they took me from the car and into our house across the street from the lake, wild, gray waves crashed over mountains of ice on the shore. Those waves were some of the first sounds that I heard. As I lay on my parents’ bed, bundled in warm blankets, Lake Michigan’s waves sang me to sleep. Their soft, rhythmic rushing brought comfort on many a night when I lived in that big, old house on Fifth Avenue. As I grew, from dawn until dusk Lake Michigan was my constant companion, my playground, my classroom, and the place where I felt closest to God.

I have never strayed far from the lake. I went to school at a university near its shore, my career as an editor took me to live in some of its port cities, and now I am settled just a few city blocks from this vast body of water that behaves like the sea. Often, I stand at the water’s edge in awe of how the sun reflects, like diamonds, on its surface and how the gentle waves make music as they wash over smooth stones. “Thank you, God, for planting me here.”

Do you know that God plants His people? He says, in Isaiah 60:21, that people are the shoot He has planted, the work of His hands for the display of His splendor. I believe that God not only has a plan for His people here on Earth, but also a place. Some find themselves firmly planted from the day they are born. Others God picks up and transplants where they are supposed to be. Wherever our place is, we will know it when we get there because it feels right. It feels like home.

Have you thought about it? Are you at home where you are, or is somewhere tugging at your heart and beckoning you to come? Even if you haven't yet found your place here on Earth, you can be sure of this: Jesus has gone to Heaven to prepare a place for you, and some day you will live there with Him forever.

"And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come back and take you to be with me that you also may be where I am." John 14:3 (NIV)