Kevin and I walked our property on Monday morning, since we were off for Presidents’ Day. During the winter, we can easily get through some places that, in the summer, are so thick with underbrush that you can’t pass. We were walking through one such place when I spotted this…

I love bird’s nests. They amaze me by how they are so sturdy and delicate at the same time. I snapped my picture, considering how long it would be until the birds came back to fill it. We have nests made by barn swallows on our porches, and, every year, they return to lay their eggs. God made it instinctual for them to return home.

The other night, over dinner with my high school friends, we were talking about how many of our very large high school class had returned to our home town to live, or at least to the metroplex. It’s quite a large number, of which I’m one. Speaking from my own experience, having left Texas (and my people here) for 11 years, the pull to come home was deep and almost beyond myself, as if a greater force was driving me here.

Homing instinct, it seems, is not just for the birds.

Truly, though, beyond the need to return home here on this planet, deep down, we were created with an instinct to return Home. We were never made to settle in here, in this life, but to pass through to where we were created to live for eternity. It makes me wonder if our longing for home, here on earth, is just the misplaced longing for heaven…for real, true belonging…for lasting, eternal love.

I’m ready to welcome the birds home. I smile as I think of the One who is ready to welcome me.

“We are here for only a moment, visitors and strangers in the land as our ancestors were before us. Our days on earth are like a passing shadow, gone so soon without a trace.” 1 Chronicles 29:15 NLT

“I do not ask that you take them out of the world, but that you keep them from the evil one. They are not of the world, just as I am not of the world. Sanctify them in the truth; your word is truth.” John 17:15-17 ESV

“But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his own possession, that you may proclaim the excellencies of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light.” 1 Peter 2:9 ESV

“In my Father’s house are many rooms. If it were not so, would I have told you that I go to prepare a place for you?” John 14:2 ESV