“… Blessed are those who earnestly wait for Him, who expect and look and long for Him, for His victory, His favor, His love, His peace, His joy, and His matchless, unbroken companionship.” (Isaiah 30: 18)

Do you ever have those moments that take to you back to a better time, when times were sweeter and days were longer, the pace was slower and life was easy?

Every summer for a couple of weeks me and my brother and cousins would get to ride horses at camp. We’d catch them in the morning and groom them, saddle them up and bridle them, learn how to post or jump or canter poles; then brush them down and turn them out into pasture each day at twilight. The horses disappearing over the hill into that dusty purple end-of-day light was truly magical. So sometimes when it’s the hazy gray after sunset, or I’m reminded of their soft velvety noses, or when Georgia leans on me like they used to, I have a nostalgia that is nearly tangible.

The recesses of our memory carry the weightiest things.

Maybe it’s not horses and summer camps, long summer days and family that you crave. Maybe it’s hearing the click of the stadium lights coming on, the buzz of them warming up on a Friday night.

Maybe it’s the smell of ballet shoes and marley floors, the hurried zip of capezio bags as the dancers change shoes between class.

Maybe it’s slipping on an old high school sweatshirt, leaving at daybreak, and watching the sunrise while fishing.

Maybe it’s chasing a dream down a long dirt road, and you know just around another bend or two you can feel that you’re almost home.

Whatever it is that takes you back to a moment in time – one you wish you could get back to – those moments of remembering how you felt, and longing to feel that again, that is how we are homesick for heaven. Look back to that verse in Isaiah.

We wait. We expect in earnest. We look. We long. We want victory, so sweet – most satisfying. We want someone’s perfect favor, forever love, an easy peace that freely gives and forgives. We want unwavering joy, not touched by circumstance.

Mostly, we want eternal, matchless, deep, unbroken companionship. Someone to walk all the days our life with – the good and the not so good – and choose to love us anyway. What if someone could love you like that? God does.

He DOES!

“’Fear not; you will no longer live in shame. Don’t be afraid: there is no more disgrace for you. You will no longer remember the shame of your youth and the sorrows of widowhood. For your Creator will be your husband; the Lord of Heaven’s Armies is His name! He is your Redeemer, the Holy One of Israel, the God of all the earth…. For the mountains may move and the hills disappear, but even then My faithful Love for you will remain. My covenant of blessing will never be broken,’ says the Lord, who has mercy on you.” (Isaiah 54:4-5,10).

Unbroken. What a strange concept, since “this broken world gives broken stories.” (TerKeurst)

What if we had something that could never be broken?

“This is how much God loved the world: He gave his Son, his one and only Son. And this is why: so that no one need be destroyed; by believing in him, anyone can have a whole and lasting life. God didn’t go to all the trouble of sending his Son merely to point an accusing finger, telling the world how bad it was. He came to help, to put the world right again.” (John 3:16-17)

“So the Word became human and made his home among us. He was full of unfailing love and faithfulness. And we have seen his glory, the glory of the Father’s one and only Son.” (John 1:14)