God Our Home

Lord, Thou hast been our dwelling-place.” — Psaum xc. 1.

‘‘Our dwelling-place.” It is the lovely and winsome figure of a home. The word recalls what ought to be to us the most alluring and radiant spot on the planet. And then it applies the remembrance to the interpretation of the hospitable house of the love and grace of God. Anybody can furnish a house if he has the money; but no money can furnish a home. Home, means a certain atmosphere... Hels indefinable and indescribable. It means a certain communion which is so sensitive and refined as to be almost independent of speech. the-realm-of.a.wireless ministry of a-superlative.order. Heme means a delicious freedom whose very simplicity is its defence.

Home. means love, deep as life and deeper

than death. The-authority-of-the home is steeped.in grace.....Its.bonds.are-silken cords. Its statutes-are”songs: Let us think of all these riches and we may then begin to feel the amazing welcome and the boundless grace that are hidden in this old familiar word, “‘ Lord, Thou hast been our dwelling-place in all generations.”

Now, there are multitudes of people who do not settle down in God as their spiritual home and enjoy abiding communion. God is only a temporary refuge, not a permanent home. Their religion is a sort of umbrella which they use in a storm. It plays no part in days when the storm is over, and the weather is calm and bright, and every circumstance is genial and comforting. God is just a shelter in time of trouble. He is not a home.

There are others to whom the Tord is only as a temple to which they periodically recur for stated and formal devotion. They pay visits to God. They do not live with Him. They have hours of worship, but they do not offer Him their life. They flirt with God, they do not seek the settled fellowship of wedded communion. They go to His temple, they do not live in His home.

And all this misses the real inheritance. God alone is our true home. And until we make Him our home everything in our life will be pinched and dwarfed like stunted trees which are away from their native clime.

Why art thou cast down, O my soul, and why art thou disquieted within me? ’’ Why so drooping? Why so stunted? Why so withered? Get away to thy native clime! Get away home to God! Thou art in the smothering air of the world. Away home! Get to thy native air, into the vitalising communion of the Father, for there thou shalt find the wealth of thy sonship, and there disquietude shall be changed into confidence, and anxiety transformed into rest! O my soul, thou art living in the streets of vagrancy! Away to thy home in the Lord!