After travelling many thousands of miles by air and by land during the past three months, the Editor has been brought safely home again in the Lord’s good providence. We have reason to acknowledge the Lord’s good hand in this and to set up our Ebenezer and say, “Hitherto hath the Lord helped us”.
In our day travel from one end of the world to the other has been rendered comparatively easy by the speed and comfort of air travel. Within a period of 24 hours it is possible to journey right across the world. Still, however carefully men have been able to perfect the art of flying, without the Lord’s safe-keeping all would fail. He is the Keeper of Israel — the Keeper of His servants and people — who slumbers not nor sleeps. On land and in the air we need the protecting care of the Lord about us to keep us from all harm and danger. What reason we have then to praise the Lord when He brings us home in safety again. As we set out we do not know what is before us. It is only as we look back that we can see and acknowledge what the Lord has done for us.
It is indeed a pleasant experience, after an absence of some months, to arrive home again. The joy of reunion with one’s family — and in the case of a minister, with one’s congregation — makes up in some measure for the sadness of parting and the loneliness of separation. How pleasant it is to see one another again and to renew the fellowship which, for a season, was interrupted by absence abroad. How thankful we are then that the Lord has preserved each one to meet again in this world. Yet at best what is this world but a place of meetings and partings. We greet friends and loved ones but soon we are saying goodbye to one or other of them. How short a time it is at the longest until we must bid farewell to our friends and loved ones in this world, for death must surely come and carry us away into the eternal world.
If a safe arrival at home in this world is so precious, how much more blessed for the people of God will a safe arrival at the house of many mansions be. This is what the Lord has promised to His blood-bought heritage, to all who hope in His mercy, that at last they shall be brought home to glory. What a blessed experience that will be when they find themselves at home in the Father’s house — in that place where Satan and sin and sorrow shall never enter. What a glorious home-coming that will be when they enter that place where glory, glory dwelleth in Immanuel’s land, where the inhabitant shall not say, I am sick, where the wicked cease from troubling and where the weary are at rest. Christ is all the glory in Immanuel’s land. What will fill the hearts of God’s redeemed ones with joy is the assurance they will have as they enter in that they are to go no more out. Those who meet in the Father’s House above, meet to part no more. What blessed communion there will be then! What uninterrupted communion! At God’s right hand there are pleasures for evermore.
The great question for us must be whether we can entertain the hope of a glorious eternity. The Apostle was saying to the Corinthians, “For we know that if our earthly house of this tabernacle were dissolved, we have a building of God, an house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens.” Can we say this? We are to remember that nothing enters heaven that defileth. Only those washed in the blood of Immanuel and clothed in the robes of His righteousness shall enter there. All who work abomination shall be shut out. Only Christ’s redeemed ones shall be there.
We must ask ourselves whether we bear the marks of His children. Do we love righteousness and hate iniquity? Do we desire to be cleansed and made whiter than the snow? Do we desire to be changed into Christ’s likeness? Do we desire to put off the old man and put on the new? If so, these give some indication that we are among the people whom the Lord has blessed and whom He is preparing for glory. Their prayer to the Lord is that He would perfect that which concerns them and the Lord will grant them their desire, for —
They shall be brought with gladness great,
and mirth on every side,
Into the palace of the king,
and there they shall abide.