Welcome Home!

I want to share this very special song with you. I got a new CD called, “Eine Kleine Kaffeemusik III” for my birthday. I was on the phone talking with my grandparents when I heard this song playing for the first time in the background. I can’t explain the feeling that washed over me. Hope. I held my breath and wondered if I was hearing the song of Heaven drifting down to earth. Nobody can tell me that music has no effect on a person. Music is…everything! I can’t live without music!

Afterwards my sister and I shared our thoughts about the song. Lydia said it sounded like “Welcome Home” to her. I agree! When I hear it, joyful hope swells within me.

Welcome home... Several weeks ago my family and I watched a WWII documentary. So many images flashed before our eyes, but one picture stayed with me. Young men, weary of war, with packs on their backs, walked off a huge ship to shore. Below, multitudes of people stood waiting to greet their loves one, finally home from the battlefield. Those faces were filled with excitement. With joy. And as those boys reached the soil of their homeland, relief was written on their faces. No more pain. No more fear of death. Finally they would be enveloped in the loving embraces of their families. They were home. Home!

I saw this black-and-white image playing before me, but in my mind’s eye I pictured another day...a joyful day in the future, when all battle-weary Christians will arrive Home after many long years of fighting a spiritual war. We will leave earth’s sadness, pain, and death forever behind. One day soon, our ships will enter celestial shores, and it will be our turn to step off the gangplank. But, unlike those soldiers, we will leave our heavy packs behind, never again to be weighed down under the load of our sin! Free! Free at last! And as we step ashore, all those dear ones who have gone on before us will be waiting to greet us with arms outstretched. And at long last we will see the face of our Saviour!

Heaven…a place where no good-byes will ever be said again. We will hear a glad “Welcome Home!” but will never need fear having to whisper those sorrowful words of parting through tears or feel the terrible empty ache inside. Can you imagine a place like this? Heaven, eternal Home of the redeemed. How beautiful Heaven must be!!!