Into the midst of our world and daily lives, which are often rife with anxiety and alarm, we are offered a vision of a glorious future filled with promise—the promise that God will make a home with us. This is a promise of an ultimate future home—a New Jerusalem!—but also a promise of God’s daily home-making presence in the hearts of all who believe. In this Sunday’s scriptures, Paul has a vision of a cry for help from Macedonia, and his beloved church at Philippi is founded in the home and household of Lydia. In Revelation, John is carried up in a vision and sees the New Jerusalem coming down, centered on the Lord God the Almighty and the Lamb. Jesus promises that though he is going away, he will come to his disciples in the power of an advocate, the Holy Spirit, and that both he and the Father will make their home in all who believe. The gathering of the faithful in week in worship offers a foretaste of this promised presence.
As we celebrate our high school graduates this Sunday, we know we send them out into the world’s reality, but we also send them out with this hope-filled promise: God abides with you wherever you call home and Triumphant Love will always be your home. Into the anxieties and uncertainties of our everyday life we are offered both a vision of a glorious future when God will be at home with us and we will be at home with God, and a living foretaste of that same future: “We will come to them and make our home with them. . . . Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you” (John 14). Join with us as we bless and send out our TLLC high school graduates and surround them with the warmth of their special blankets and the warmth of our triumphant love!
Image: Jesus, stained glass. Cathedral of St. John the Evangelist, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. Copyright © Godong/Alamy Stock Photo. Used by permission