Coming Home

I love winter. The colder and frostier it is, the better I like it. You know that kind of cold that literally takes your breath away and your lungs feel like they have just been to the North Pole; yes, that is the kind of cold I like. Ah, the crunchy-snow, frost on your eye-lids kind of cold. I do not even mind the chill that can seem to settle into your very bones; I rather like it. There’s no telling how sweet it is to warm up by a blazing hearth. When spring arrives, I’ll know I have earned the smell of earth-renewing freshness and pungent scent of snow sinking down to nourish hidden roots and flower bulbs. It is worth the wait.

And the birdhouse will be full of singing again. It almost went down, down into the fast-flowing brook, as a fierce gale had leveraged it from its tree-fastened home. My sister rescued it and now it sits on an old school desk; waiting for its family to come home. Today, I find myself waiting to come home; to come home to my refuge, my Saviour. 

I hesitate, because my sin has kept me out in the cold. Out in the frosty, sharp breath-defying cold, I am undone by the thoughts of my heart and the weakness of my faith. And yet, my Saviour keeps His hearth ready, always accessible by prayer; never far from His thoughts. Jesus, so willing and so able to thaw out my frozen heart; to sweep away the frozen ashes of sin and fill my heart with singing once again.

Oh Jesus, draw me close today, for I am coming home, singing that old hymn:

Come home. Come home.

You who are weary come home.

Softly and tenderly Jesus is calling

Calling, oh sinner, come home.”

“Draw near to God and he will draw near to you.”

(James 4:8)