Today’s Scripture Readings

Gospel Reading

NRSV

‘Do not let your hearts be troubled. Believe in God, believe also in me. In my Father’s house there are many dwelling-places. If it were not so, would I have told you that I go to prepare a place for you? And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and will take you to myself, so that where I am, there you may be also. And you know the way to the place where I am going.’ Thomas said to him, ‘Lord, we do not know where you are going. How can we know the way?’ Jesus said to him, ‘I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.

I grew up in Darwin, but have lived most of my life elsewhere. In the rare moments that I think about it, I find that I do miss it – there is a certain homesickness. But oddly, on occasions that I’ve returned there, I’ve found that the sense of longing associated with the place actually intensifies: rather than assuaging my homesickness, it makes it stronger. A longing in me is drawn out by the feel of the humidity, the smell of the ocean, the sound of kites whistling as they circle a smoke column hanging in the dry season sky.

This intensification of desire suggests that the thing I’m longing for is not, in fact, Darwin itself, but something deeper. Nevertheless, this “something” is powerfully evoked by place: triggering not just homesickness, but a heartsickness that can’t be satisfied by anyplace on this earth.

Jesus knows all about this heartsickness, and he urges that our hearts not be troubled. Yet the place he promises as a cure is not a location that we can reach by looking back into our past, nor by trying to freeze time in moments of happiness in the present. No, as Christians we are a pilgrim people, always journeying toward the Kingdom where God’s peace reigns eternally.

In this life we are only granted glimpses of that peace: and the truest glimpses come when we keep our sight fixed on Jesus himself. He is the one who is the way to our true home; he is the truth that our hearts long for; he is the abundant life next to which our most precious memories are only a shadow.

When do you experience a heartsickness for your true home?