Home Sickness

#1356

HOME SICKNESS

One of my friends told me of his young son going to Boy Scout camp for the first time. He became very homesick, the youngest of four, his siblings all grown, college graduates, his anxious mother and father went to get him. The question, who was more anxious? Child or parents? In my military experience as a medical officer, I believe the sickest patients I ever encountered were young people, both male and female, away from home the first time, desperately homesick...the world's worst illness. In my experience, I had some rough – tough, top grade, enlisted men trainees who always recognized the symptoms. They had empathy for that type illness because they themselves had undergone the trauma. I remember one of my uncles, returning from WWII, who told me about his homesickness as a young recruit, never having been away from home before, he said, “ I finally went to my commanding officer and told him I was going to die unless I could have a leave and go home.” It was mid-war and he was thousands of miles away from home. The CO said, “Then you will just have to die because there is no way you can go home.” Many college students go through this same traumatic experience if they have never had the present day experience of getting away from home for a camp or perhaps church related vacation. The soul of an animal has a certain attachment to the “home place”. Many examples of dogs who have traveled long distances to return home.

Strange is the soul of a human being without affection. We who bear the name of Christ know that our citizenship is in Heaven, that we are just passing through on this planet (1 Peter 2:11).

But ye [are] a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a peculiar people; that ye should shew forth the praises of him who hath called you out of darkness into his marvellous light (1 Peter 2:9).

We need not get attached to this world or love the things of this world. (1 John 2:15) Seven times, in the new testament, the world is referred to in different ways such as God giving his son for the world. (John 3:16) Only the chosen, those chosen by God before the foundation of the world, those sinners chosen by God are in a separated world, looking forward to total separation from the wiles of Satan. The chosen of God is homesick for the time of separation from the troubles, trials, temptations, diseases of this world where we are in constant combat with the demons of Satan. Like radio waves- radiology incrementation, we are in warfare. Many “pew warmers” never realize their combat. They have fallen for the malarkey that God needs them. For God to be God, he does not need anything. The beauty of spirituality, he spends his time picking out those who will spend eternity with Him.

Satan is on the job. We know that now there is a cyanide chip which can be inserted, even without your knowledge, and activated at will by the political enemy. This is another type of scientific warfare for which many will suffer. Just think of the potential, pilots, surgeons, etc. When one considers the powers of the air with which we must deal, not flesh and blood (Eph 6). The one who knows his survival depends entirely on the righteousness of Christ within him (1 John: 4:4) You become homesick for the narrow way-not the broad way that leads to life eternal. (Mat 7:14).

God wants those homesick for Heaven. He has seen pretending before, the children of Israel constructed a gold calf to worship just a few days after their deliverance from slavery. After the great flood, the population of the earth destroyed. Great grandson of Noah, nimrod, already forgetting the flood, building an escape from God. Western civilization, America, blessed beyond words to express, now a cauldron of sin and debauchery. The martyrs (Hebrews 12) who suffered for the faith were just the pace setters. Just think what they could have done with modern technology. Two-thousand years on this side of the cross, thousands of years on the other side of the cross, man has yet to learn that just as in the perfect world which God created (Gen 1:31). We have everything we need but as the one tree in the garden, God has established his rights. We are just leasing here, passing through. God knows those who put him first, who want nothing more than his eternal presence now and forever. God gets excited when the old man of sin and rejection becomes the new man looking forward to home.