Hearts and Minds: “Home at Last” A Meditation on Renewed Creation

It’s hard to describe how it feels. Light, I guess. Light. My whole life, I felt this burden, this weight, this baggage that I carried around. It was tiring. It was humiliating. It was depressing. Day after day—the struggle. But not now! Now it's light.

I glide through the days. My mind is on fire with thoughts after God. My heart is aflame with connection and communion. My soul is enlarged with each conversation, interaction, and sweet contemplation. I have energy now like never before. They say you physically peak in your early twenties, but man-o-man, I can vouch for 1013 years old! Each day, I have the energy to want to please God, will to please God, desire to please God, and live in a way that does please God. I do the Father’s will by choice, yes, but also, can I say, by instinct. Polanyi would call it tacit knowledge; I call it the result of a life of discipleship where I glorify God by enjoying him forever. I am full of the Spirit of the living God—always in communion with him. I am being transformed into the image and likeness of Christ every day, every Aeon.

There is so much to do here, so much to see, so much to taste and experience. And unencumbered by sin, I have the means to do what I really want to do—serve the Lord, live in community, and flourish.

Here, they call this experience rest.

Rest. What a lovely reality. I am at rest from the struggle against sin and temptation, and I am at rest in the goodness of God. Rest, of course, is not to be mistaken for immobility; it’s not staying in one place and doing nothing—quite the opposite. Rest is the state of being right with God and everything else related to God. This rest has an internal stillness that equates to peace, tranquillity, and prayer.

I can now see the world as God sees it. Not perfectly, of course, but towards perfection.

I feel feelings after Christ; I am spirit now. Embodied, of course, physical, to be sure, but spirit—animated and possessed by God’s Holy Empowering Presence, the Holy Spirit infuses my body, soul, and spirit. I am moved to a life that never seemed attainable—until now. Now, it is more than attainable—it is the reality of my existence.

Light, I feel light. I am surrounded by light. I am light.

And at the same time, ironically, I feel heavy. Not the heaviness of heart I once had, not the heaviness of carrying a burden, and not the heaviness that makes you weary. Not that kind of heaviness. Heaviness like, say, weightiness or importance or purity. Like the way gold is heavy as opposed to, say, tin. Like the way that important things, things that matter like love and justice and goodness, are heavy, as opposed to, say, the fluff of the crass, the sarcastic, or the trivial.

I feel heavy. I feel a weight that is not my own pressing down on me, surrounding me, and always enveloping me. It is a good weight—reverent, blessed, and sacred. I feel the Son’s grace, the Father’s love, and the Spirit’s communion. It’s present, constant, palpable, tangible. I can taste it. It wells up, day after day, and grows and expands like a holy bubble that then bursts over me in blessedness again and again and again. I experience the weight of God’s glory anointing me in showers of the Lord’s presence. I am washed, sated, sanctified.

Here, this life, this existence, this place is stunning, breathtaking, contemplative, and exhilarating simultaneously. I am compelled to love and laugh, to work and play, to explore and to be still, to run and to snooze, to make and to receive. Behold Christ has made all things new. The home of the Father is now our home, too. The Spirit is present in all. The earth and all of creation are given to us to rule, renew, and relish. Holy, Holy, Holy is the Lord God Almighty!

With the triune God of grace and glory, we, together, create. Together, we invent. Together, we enjoy. Together, we flourish. There is so much to do, so much to be, so much to become. We walk on streets of gold through gates of pearl, along paths bordered by precious stones, together with the church in glory, living out God’s good intentions for us all along.

I have work to do, meaningful work, valuable work, God-honouring work. I have problems to solve, conversations to have, and a lot of listening to participate in. You have never tasted fruit like this, heard music like that, or seen sights like these. Not in your wildest dreams. And, you have never enjoyed such sweet fellowship, such enjoyable parties, and such intense and fulfilling contemplation.

But those things, those excellent, glorious, and grand things, are nothing, nothing compared to the real secret of this place. Well, it’s not much of a secret, truth be told. In the middle—I’m not speaking geographically here, you understand—in the middle is God. Father, Son, Holy Spirit. Fountains, streams, rivers, oceans of living water, clouds of shekinah glory, wind and light, gentle and terrifying, low and high, large and small, close and transcendent—you don’t have any language suitable for me to use to convey to you what it’s like here! What he’s like here! What we’re like here! Beautiful comes close. Sweet … ok. Well, no, it’s not ok. It’s partial, it’s parallel, it’s approximate. But here, here—he is here! He is here in his fullness. And we commune with him. In the old life, we tasted this back then, but now we feed on him. We looked at his beauty then, but here we pass into it.

I could go on, and I do, we all do, all day, every day here—we call it worship, and we do it constantly. Every word, every thought, every feeling, every activity is worship.

We are home, home at last.

God is good, and he is good all the time. And in his goodness, as his goodness, he has created our home and placed us in it—the old has gone, the new has come. There is so much abundance here, things to do, to see, feel, taste, hear, and … O look at that, what has God planned for today, I wonder? 

Myk Habets is head of the School of Theology at Laidlaw College, teaches theology, and is associate pastor of Albany Baptist Church.