Returning Home?
Salvation is about returning home—the return to joy.
Salvation is the joy that comes in the morning (Ps. 30:5).
But…
Many of our homes were/are filled with pain and neglect, abuse and trauma, loneliness and fear.
We can’t imagine what really joy is even like—the joy that comes in the presence of someone who delights to be with us.
All we know—in our bones, our bodies—is rejection, fear, loneliness, bitterness, abandonment.
Is home really safe? Do I really want to go back home?
To be true salvation, our returning to home—to our home with God—must pass through this pain, confront the abuse, transform the trauma. Otherwise it is just lip-service, a facade, a veneer.
Home Coming To Us
So God comes down, takes on flesh, and makes his home with us—in our pain and neglect, in our abuse and trauma, in our loneliness and fear.
God comes to us so that we can return home with God—a new kind of home.
And Jesus does this in joy—for us and with us.
“For the joy set before him he endured the cross, scorning its shame” (Heb. 12: 2).
Morning and Night
Salvation isn’t just the joy that comes in the morning.
Salvation is the joy that walks with us in the night.
The joy standing with us.
God with us…
…even in the dark.
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(These are just quick thoughts as I remember my conversation with Chris Coursey about Can you just turn on JOY. Check it out on iTunes, Spotify, YouTube, or Google).