Far From Home

I have a friend who has severe cerebral palsy. As she grew up, her dad carried her everywhere on his back. When he worked at his job, he carried her with him. If they went anywhere in the car, her dad carried her from her wheelchair to the car. When her dad got cancer, she prayed expectantly for his healing. When he died, my friend’s expectations of God were blasted.
Is that unusual? Have you ever had that experience with God?

The Bible is very clear that we can have moments when we are aware of the fullness of God. God promises us that we will have times when we clearly sense God’s presence and grace, his closeness. But the most common experience of God in the Bible is the experience of periods of unanswered prayer and longing for God. It happens even to those people who have come to know Christ, whose sins are forgiven, and who eternal destiny in heaven is assured. So we can expect to spend days and weeks and months in the desert. When those dry times happen, we need to know that we are not spiritual freaks whose faith is counterfeit.

Genesis 4 records that violent argument between two brothers that ends with murder. (And you think your brother’s a jerk!) At the end of that sordid story, Cain the killer is on the lam, looking over his shoulder, expecting revenge. Then, as the story unfolds, a baby is born. The poor kid’s given the name "Enosh," which means "weakling." It looks to us that with a name like that, there will be other fights coming. But no, the name is a sign. The sign is that because they believe in God, they will be despised as weaklings by their glitzy neighbours. They will also have times of great weakness, of dry days in the desert, times of confusion. "Then people began to call upon the name of the Lord." We too have times of weakness, times in the desert, times of longing. They are just the times when we can call on the name of the Lord. As we read further through the Old Testament, we discover some of the names of God. They are names about His connecting work with us. God, the provider for us. God, the protector for us. God, the banner who goes before us. God, who gives to us satisfaction and sufficient resources out of the fullness of who he is. That’s what the name "Jehovah" means. It’s the name for God that represents the overarching fullness of the totality of the God who is for people. That will always be his name. That’s the Good News. Because, though my times in the desert are inevitable. My times when God seems far away are to be expected. But they won’t change the fact that God is there, and that God is for us.

That’s when the lights begin to come on for me. I come to those days when I am painfully aware of my own frailty. I come to those experiences when I am aware of how much I need God. But at the same time, I read and hear about the fullness of God. I read in the Bible and hear in worship that God is a massive, unlimited resource. What's left but to go to Him and to pursue Him? So right here at the beginning in Scripture, people are keenly aware of their frailty. With conflict, jealousy, and even murder, they feel so far away from home. What is it that they long for? Though at times they can’t put a name to it, what they long for is the fullness of God. So they reach out to God. And that’s the beginning of a godly line that runs right through Scripture and is here today. It’s an ongoing story of people who sense that without God, they are far from home. And they focus themselves on the pursuit of God. It’s true that we are far from home. And it’s also true that we can call on the God who beckons us to come home to a welcome in his presence.

But let’s back up a step here. Is it going to be easy for us to wake up to our own weakness? Not a chance! Because you and I live in a culture that drums into our heads the importance of believing in yourself. One of the highest values in our culture is to be independent. Aren’t we addicted to independence? It’s a disease. It even infects the church. How many of us in church just bristle at the thought of somebody telling us what to do? We live in a culture that has a disdain for dependence, a culture that keeps saying, "What do you mean you need to depend on that? You can’t really mean that your faith has anything to do with your politics! That’s scary! You're such a weakling! Do your own thing! Run your own life! Take from here, and take from there when it satisfies you. Maybe sometimes, when it’s useful to you, you can take from the church and from religion. Take what you want, and ditch what you don’t want. But, above all, be your own person. You don’t need anything from anybody!"

In 2003, Time Magazine ran a lot of letters to the editor reacting to Time’s treatment of the book of Genesis. There are several best-selling new books that purport to deal with themes from Genesis. The DaVinci Code is one of them. By the way, don't look to them for solid, biblical exegesis, reliable truthful research and good, solid, logical conclusions. But nevertheless, these kind of books are sweeping the country. So the letters to the editor of Time Magazine start flowing in. Stephen G. Cox - (needless to say, he’s no relation to me) - writes from Boston. He says, "Genesis was written because of people's unceasing need to look outside themselves for morals, guidance, and meaning to life. That's why Genesis was written." And I thought to myself, "Yeah, exactly. That is one of the probing themes of Genesis: the inherent need for real people to understand how frail they are. And out of that frailty, to reach out for meaning beyond themselves. To relate their faith to their public life." That’s one of the themes that runs throughout the book of Genesis.

Then, at the close of his letter, Cox pops the balloon. He says, "Perhaps one day we will progress a little farther than this." A little farther than believing that we have to reach outside of ourselves for meaning, for guidance. When he wrote that, he just stood up and echoed what all our culture keeps yelling at us. It’s constantly dinned into our ears that we don’t need to look outside of ourselves for meaning. We don’t need to look outside of ourselves for guidance. We should do our own thing. So it will be a phenomenal challenge to hear from the Bible and believe that we indeed are weak and that we need someone, and that Someone is God in all of His fulness.

As I was thinking about this text, the picture of the prodigal son popped into my head. He thought to himself, "Wow! If I can just find a way to get my dad's inheritance, pack up my goods, and go to a far country! Whoa! Then I'll do my own life. I'll make life really what I've always hoped it would be. I’ll show the old man how life should be lived!" So off he runs to a far country. He soon finds out where life left to itself ends up. He found himself in a pigsty. "Then he came to his senses." He came to a place in his life where he knew he was far from home. When Christ told the story, he pictures God as the Father at home waiting, longing, hoping, watching for the prodigal to come home. The Father keeps going down the driveway and looking down the road. When the wanderer came to his senses started down the long road toward home. It was a picture of supposedly strong people experiencing the depth of their own weakness, who rise up and say, "I need God."

There is a reason why the deer pants for the water brooks. He knows how much he needs the refreshment of the water. I won’t ask you to raise your hands. But is there any one of us here in this room who doesn’t have many times and experiences of our own great weakness, our own great need? We hear about God. We look at others and hear others who seem to experience an unceasing closeness of God’s presence, and the thrill that goes with it. People tell us that God speaks to them. I won’t do a head count, but do you think it’s possible that most of us can’t honestly say that we experience that very often? Or, maybe not at all? That is a longing for home. And it’s the beginning of the journey home. It’s a journey that ends with the wide open arms of welcome. It ends with the best clothes and the finest food at the Father’s Table. In the meantime, we hear about him, but don’t experience his closeness to us. We know how much we need Him, but long to have him fill our need. That’s a longing for God that is placed in our hearts by God. It means that we have begun the journey that will bring us to home, to the waiting Father.

There’s something else. As we acknowledge our great weakness, we will discover that it is not so much that we are seeking God. Before it ever occurred to us to seek God, God seeks us. God persuades us, beckons to us. "Come," God says, "Come." I’ve opened the door through Jesus. Come home.

See, our hope is not in our feelings. It’s not in the glitter and the thrill. Our hope is in God. What I experience may be completely different from what you experience. We may spend long hours in the darkness of night, in the cold winter season of the soul, in the dry desert of longing. But though we may not feel him, God is there. That’s why the only response we can have is the response of trust. When our expectations of a spiritual thrill are not met, we can only trust God to be true. We can’t walk by sight or hearing or touch. We walk by faith in the Son of God who loves us and gave himself for us.