After 70 years, when Jewish exiles returned to Jerusalem and the Second Temple reconstruction was completed and dedicated by the shedding of much animal blood, they celebrated the Passover, eager to seek God through their age-old rituals and traditions. They were home.
Ezra 6:21
So the Israelites who had returned from the exile ate it [Passover lamb], together with all who had separated themselves from the unclean practices of their Gentile neighbors in order to seek the LORD, the God of Israel.
What is my first order of business upon returning home from a long absence? Although I have no hard and fast religious practices to resume, I am anxious to get back into my routine. There is comfort in the familiar. I am happy to greet my dogs and take them outside. I peruse the mail, I make a cup of tea.
There are very few things that I can only do at home and yet, when I do, I am more contented. I can pray anywhere, but when I sit in my favorite chair, I fall into a quick communion with Christ. I can read scripture when I am away, any access will get me there, but my well-worn black leather Bible still comforts me by feel and sound, as the thin pages crackle.
Returning to church after a time away is also consoling with the familiar music and warm engagement with friends. For me, even my work, which can feel redundant and tedious sometimes, breathes into me when I walk through the door, breathes welcome.
There are amazing stories of families who have been separated by years and years through political insanity, such as the Berlin wall that divided East and West Germany or the Iron Curtain or the North Korean Demilitarized Zone, still active today. But when those barriers came down, families found one another again and fell upon each other joy and weeping. The touch of a beloved one.
Even I, when I met my half sister (who lives in Estonia) for the first time in 1996, we embraced fiercely, for we were bound by blood, the same father, and it sustained us. On the same trip, I met my aunt, my mother’s sister for the first time, and her heart exploded when we clung to each other. I was in foreign lands where I did not speak the language well, where homes were completely different from my own, where the culture had suffered from the cruel and powerful through communism, and yet, I was also home.
In May of this year, I will be retracing my steps and re-uniting again my half-sister and aunt. And my heart craves for that time together.
This is a type of longing that God wants me to have for the Holy Spirit every day.
“Come away, my beloved . . . ” [Song of Solomon 8:14a]; come home.
Meditations from Zion 