“In my Father’s house are many mansions…I go to prepare a place for you…”   (John 14:2)

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The hallways full of laughter, students shoving and pushing to get through, talking and texting simultaneously, gazing up at lists posted outside the school office.

“What homeroom do you have?” shouts one fifteen-year-old girl above the din.

“Same as last year. Same as next year!” the sixteen-year-old boy yells back.

Heading to his homeroom, the same one he had in his freshman year, this tenth grade student enters the room, locates the seat he occupied last year and sits down. It’s a comfortable spot, one he is familiar with, a place with a view he recognizes, one that feels safe—but he knows he can’t remain here. He will have to walk out of that room and enter new ones and sit in different seats with views that he doesn’t recognize or feel comfortable in.

Ten minutes pass and the door opens to a bustling crowd, loud and boisterous. He rises, but lingers. As others push past him, he remains, still looking at the seat.

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In 25 years of teaching, I regularly saw former students gravitate to the same seats they had the previous year. Nothing was assigned; they were just drawn to a place that was known to them. It was comfortable; it was something to hold onto in a time of change with new classes, different teachers, and difficult challenges.

Like these students, we also tend to choose conditions and places that are more secure—a “home room” that feels safe and familiar, where a sense of belonging exists. “I have a place here. I’m home.”

In an ever-changing world, such a place is hard to find. Job transitions take us to different cities, neighborhoods we live in change with new people, children grow up and leave—and yet we all, at some point, tend to make the journey back to that comfort area we call “home.” It is a place, however, that will always be transient here—the “throwback Thursday” phenomenon of nostalgia that we try to return to but can only visit in memory.

This secure place can only be found with God. His Home is ever-stable, always open, never-changing. It is the comfort place, the one with that familiar seat, the one we want to linger in always. “I have a place here. I’m home”—eternally.

And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and receive you to Myself; that where I am, there you may be also.   (John 14:3)

(Sharon G. Tate blog 09/03/17) teacherforjesus.com Meditations on God’s Word