This is my friend, Mia, who is standing on her homeland. She posted this picture yesterday, and I haven’t been able to shake its image from my mind. Certainly, she’s beautiful (isn’t she beautiful?), but there is something more that speaks to me here. There seems to be a kinship with the land, an unexpected, overwhelming love, because it’s the origin of her people.

It’s home.

Now I’m going to stop right here and tell you that I don’t believe she’s ever lived there. And I know she would tell you that her home is where her heart is; her home is wherever her little family lays its head.

But, there is something about standing on the ground of your ancestry that makes all those old sepia photos, of people you don’t know, come alive in your mind. It grounds old family stories, giving them a setting that is touchable and real. Suddenly, with that ground under your feet, you are part of a much greater whole, a group of people with whom you share lifeblood, and with whom God saw fit to place you in a common lineage.

Really, this makes me think of heaven. I imagine it, sometimes.

I imagine getting there and, the moment my foot touches the ground, feeling overwhelmed with love for it. Folks walk up to greet me; some I recognize, but all of them , all, I understand, are my family. I know in that instant that I’m part of a much greater whole, and a God-ordained lineage of perfect love and peace and joy. I may have never lived there, but I stand, gazing across it’s beautiful shore, with the knowledge that I’ve somehow come full circle. I’ve returned to the origins of my people.

Yes, when I get to heaven, I will have come home.

“No eye has seen, no ear has heard,
    and no mind has imagined
what God has prepared
    for those who love him.” 1 Corinthians 2:9 NLT

“I give them eternal life, and they will never perish, and no one will snatch them out of my hand.” John 10:28 ESV

“Jesus said to him, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.” John 14:6 ESV