Lest We Forget Our Home's With God

We sang a song in Relief Society yesterday called Come Home.  I had never heard it before.   It was so beautiful it brought tears to my eyes.  The women of our stake are going to sing it for stake conference.  I can't wait.  It's going to be awesome.  (You can print out the music here.)  I was lucky enough to find a recording of it on youtube.  

It reminded me that earth is not my home.  My real home is with God.  My time here is temporary, and God wants me to come home to him.

Why don't we think of Heaven more?  We should not only be thinking of it but longing for it.  I think we should be visualizing what Heaven will be like, and  by so doing it will increase our desire to return there.  Picture yourself in the most wonderful, beautiful place you can imagaine.  Imagine being with our Savior and feeling his love for you.  Imagine your family there, and how happy everyone is.   It's wonderful to think about.    Isn't it?  Beginning with the end in mind is one of the 7 habits of highly effective people.   We need to have a clear vision of where we want to go if we ever want to get there.  

Steven R. Covey says,

 "To begin with the end in mind means to start with a clear understanding of your destination.  It means to know where you're going so that you better understand where you are now and so that the steps you take are always in the right direction."  (The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People,  p. 98)

This is so true.  As I left church yesterday, and was thinking about this song, I started asking myself questions like, what things am I doing now that will keep me from returning home to my Father in Heaven?"  Am I spending all of my time and energy on the things of this world?"  What things about my life do I need to change?"  "What do I need to repent of?"
How different would our lives be if we kept a picture of Heaven always in our minds.   Would we try harder each day to do what matters most?

I love this from C. S. Lewis in Mere Christianity, 

"Hope is one of the Theological virtues.  This means that a continual looking forward to the eternal world is not (as some modern people think) a form of escapism or wishful thinking, but one of the things a Christian is meant to do.  It does not mean that we are to leave the present world as it is.  If you read history you will find that the Christians who did most for the present world were just those who thought most of the next.  The Apostles themselves, who set on foot the conversion of the Roman Empire, the great men who build up the Middle Ages, the English Evangelicals who abolished the Slave Trade, all left their mark on Earth, precisely because their minds were occupied with Heaven.  It is since Christians have largely ceased to think of the other world that they have become so ineffective in this.  Aim at Heaven and you will get earth 'thrown in':  aim at earth and you will get neither.  ...In the same way, we shall never save civilisation as long as civilisation is our main object.  We must learn to want something else even more."

"...I must take care, on the one hand, never to despise, or be unthankful for, these earthly blessings, and on the other, never to mistake them for the something else of which they are only a kind of copy, or echo, or mirage.  I must keep alive in myself the desire for my true country, which I shall not find till after death; I must never let it get snowed under or turned aside;  I must make it the main object of life to press on to that other country and to help others to do the same."  (C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity, Chap. 10)

Come Home
1. Come home, the Father calls.

Come home, my child, to me.

Come home.

The Holy Ghost will lead you to eternity.

Lest we forget our home’s with God,

This lovely earth, its seas, its sky

And all things beautiful and true

of Heav’nly Father testify.

2. Come home, the Savior calls.

Come home all who’ll obey.

Come home. The gospel guides

along the straight and narrow way.

3. Come home, loved voices call.

Come home where you belong.

Come home to live in joy

forever in our fam’ly throng.

Words by Penelope Moody Allen