It was our happy privilege for some years to visit a dear old saint of God, who has since fallen asleep, to await that long looked-for morn when the trumpet shall sound and the dead in Christ shall arise.
Many were the happy hours spent in her solitary room, and often I came away refreshed from my visit with one poor in this world, but rich in faith.
Close upon a century her years had run, and for a very long time she had known the Lord as her Savior, her refuge, and comfort. We constantly felt when with her, we were in the presence of one to whom heaven was not simply heaven, but home.
As a home she constantly spoke of it, with evident reality, and yet with perfect simplicity; for the deep, blessed teaching of the Spirit of God had made this home, so soon to be hers, a very real place to her; a place she longed for day by day.
If, after some threatening attack, we said to her, “Well, grandma, not gone home yet?” She would reply.
“No, not yet; I must have patience.”
One afternoon I said to her.
“Well, grandma, wouldn’t you like to live to be a hundred years old?” as she only lacked three or four years of that great age. Her quick reply was, “No, I wouldn’t—not at all; I want to go to be with Jesus. If I am His, and He is mine, what more do I want? His rod and staff will comfort me.”
Then, as one standing by repeated the lines,
“There would I find a settled rest,
While others go and come
No more a stranger nor a guest,
But like a child at home.”
“Yes, I shall be ‘like a child at home,’”
grandma added; “I shall ‘see Him as He is, and praise Him as I ought.’”
Thus this aged woman, ignorant and unlettered though she was, had been taught by the Holy Spirit to know and believe, in the simplicity of faith, the love of God to her. It was this knowledge that made heaven a home to her.
“A child at home!” Dear young reader, is that your thought of heaven? You sing, “Heaven is our home.” But, what is home? The expression of social bliss on earth is conveyed in that word; as the father returns home after the labor and toil of the day, and the little ones run down the path to meet “father,” each longing to be first to obtain the welcome kiss—that is home.
He who gave His Son for us, is He not our Father? Did He not give us the kiss of welcome when, in our rags and ruin, we first came to Him? What are our thoughts of Him now? Should we be in His presence as children at home? Let us ask our own hearts whether we have so learned His love, His perfect love which casts out fear; and are so walking before Him and with Him, that we look forward to His presence, as dear old grandma did, with the restful, assured feeling with which a child looks forward to his home?