There is no place like home-I am only beginning to embrace this truth as I learn to become a daughter of the House. Someone asked what is my heart’s desire, and as clichè as it can be, I said I want to be in the presence of God. So, where will the presence of God be found? Strangely, the place where it is causing much pain is where Home is. God’s presence is here even when hearts feel so hardened, people feel so dead.

Twenty eighteen, a year where I think I reached a melting point in the spiritual state I was at, passed by in a wink. I could barely breathe and before I knew, it was over. The more I wanted to see God, the more I saw myself. The more I saw myself, the more I struggled and saw the need to see God. As John Calvin said, without knowledge of self there is no knowledge of God, without knowledge of God there is no knowledge of self. Our feeling of ignorance, vanity, want, weakness, in short, depravity and corruption, reminds us, (see Calvin on John 4:10,) that in the Lord, and none but He, dwell the true light of wisdom, solid virtue, exuberant goodness. We are accordingly urged by our own evil things to consider the good things of God; and, indeed, we cannot aspire to Him in earnest until we have begun to be displeased with ourselves.

God called us out as His sons and daughters. It was a year full of threshing and winnowing. Grains were broken apart into its constituent parts: wheat—the kernels, chaff—the husks that held the kernels, and the straw—the stocks on which the heads of grain grow. The grains were then separated from the other elements in preparation for storage and use. Sons and daughters were threshed and winnowed out. It was not an easy process, where separation and anxiety were experienced, so that we grow.

Out of this space, learning to be a daugter of the House, I experienced much pain once again. As I thought it might be over and done for me, God spoke, my Abba Father spoke life into my being, once again. I saw the ugliest me, totally disgusted with the responses that I thought I had worked out with God and utterly ashamed of the failure that I thought was grave. I hid away. I hid away from God, doubting every single truth that I have been holding fast to. A relentless battle of the heart, mind and soul ensued.

I pleaded with the Lord about this, that it should leave me. But he said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” Therefore I will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may rest upon me. For the sake of Christ, then, I am content with weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions, and calamities. For when I am weak, then I am strong. (2 Corinthians 12:8‭-‬10 ESV) So, until we all attain to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to mature manhood, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ, so that we may no longer be children, tossed to and fro by the waves and carried about by every wind of doctrine, by human cunning, by craftiness in deceitful schemes. Rather, speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up in every way into Him who is the head, into Christ, from whom the whole body, joined and held together by every joint with which it is equipped, when each part is working properly, makes the body grow so that it builds itself up in love. (Ephesians 4:13‭-‬16 ESV)

As we grow as sons and daughters of the One True King, we may lose much in this world but the gain is immeasurable in the world He has prepared for us.

Notes:

Institutes of the Christian Religion, John Calvin