It is a sad thing to stand at the gate of where home used to be and now it is not. You stand like a stranger, a guest without a welcome, at a gate that once swung open to your touch.
You have no right to open it now, no right to smile and step inside and say ‘I’m home.’ You stand outside; the warmth and the welcome that was once yours by right is now locked. Everyone inside the gate is a stranger to you and you feel like an alien to everyone outside.
I know because I have stood there.
Like passing generations, you repeat sadly, ‘I am a passing guest, as all my forefathers were’. It is a collective admission of insignificance by a disappearing people – a people who have no right to call this world ‘home’.
So where do you go to go home?
Like a little dark swallow, you slip into a cave to hide from a world that has shut its gate on you.
But wait. A cave is not your home. Even the swallow and the sparrow are given more wonderful apartments than caves. Listen, “Even the sparrow finds a home, and the swallow has her nest where she rears her brood beside your altars, Lord of Hosts, my King and God.” (Psalm 84).
You see, He has already prepared a place for you where the gate is always open so tell the world and invite everyone you meet to come with you. Open the gate of your homelessness and let Him put His altar there to make His home your own. ‘And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again, and receive you unto myself; that where I am, there ye may be also,’ (John 14:3).
Elizabeth Price