January 3, Home

Our Father refreshes us on the journey with some pleasant inns, but will not encourage us to mistake them for home.
-C.S. Lewis

There is beauty amongst the ashes. There are roses amongst the thorns. As long as you take time to look God has strewn our paths, however difficult or overwhelming they might be with bits of happiness, joy, and loveliness. We aren't home. Home lies at the end of this journey but He is here and as long as we look to Him through it all, here can be a very lovely inn for keeping us warm for the stay.

The Bible says that we should store up treasures in heaven, not earthly treasures. I think that the saying "home is where the heart is" (although meaning something very different originally) is just another way of saying this very thing. None of us are truly content because this isn't home. If we were content here then what would be keeping our eyes on the prize? The little joys, happy moments, absolute astonishingly beautiful things aren't meant to satisfy us but to draw us closer to the Creator. It's all His doing, all His blessing; it all comes from above, from home.

The settled happiness and security which we all desire, God withholds from us by the very nature of the world: but joy, pleasure, and merriment, He has scattered broadcast. We are never safe, but we have plenty of fun, and some ecstasy. It is not hard to see why. The security we crave would teach us to rest our hearts in this world and oppose an obstacle to our return to God: a few moments of happy love, a landscape, a symphony, a merry meeting with our friends, a bathe or football match, have no such tendency. Our Father refreshes us on the journey with some pleasant inns, but will not encourage us to mistake them for home.
-C.S. Lewis
The Business of Heaven