In college, we are in an awkward stage of life. We move from everything we’ve ever known to a whole new world. It sometimes can feel like you’re breathing, but not from your own lungs. You know you have a pulse, but you feel like the heart is not from your chest. It’s all foreign. People never fail to make known that college is hard because of the immense amount of school work. What people don’t tell you is the hardest part of it all –feeling like you don’t have a home. Regardless of how much you love your college town, your new roommate, your freedom, there is nothing comfortable about transitioning from all you’ve ever known. So, where do we find home? At some point, we must learn that the surface level friendships we make in the bar bathroom will never bring us the comfort we are longing for. There’s brokenness everywhere. In the bars, in the dorms, in our parent’s homes, and even in our church. We need to lean into what is not broken. We must find home in the never-changing, ever-lasting love of Jesus that will captivate you and never let you go. In this time of uncertainty about where we belong, we need to learn how to press into God to let His peace fill our heart. There is no place safer to call home than in the presence of the very one who created you.
Our natural reaction to all this change is to seek short-term satisfaction in place of eternal joy. The lie the world wants you to believe is that you’re going to find happiness in everything the Lord hates. I think that we even feel this play out in our lives. We feel shameful, and we have this gut-wrenching feeling that there is a huge piece of your heart that is missing when we feed into worldly desires and not the desires of God. Can you imagine being a father, watching your child fall into a pit instead of them simply grabbing your hand and following your direction. That’s how Jesus feels, and as we seek to fill the void in our hearts as our very foundations of life are being eroded, we need to reach our hands up to Him. He will hold on to us. He will pull us up. He will fill us with the joy He desires us to have. Jesus cares for you immensely, and you are never too far away from Him. He will meet you wherever you are at in life. Make Him your home. He will provide roots that cannot be torn. He can’t and will not fail you. As our living situations, friendships, and responsibilities change, He will not. Jesus is unchanging, perfect, and trustworthy. When the world stops turning, Heaven will not. He is an everlasting home.
Deuteronomy 31:8 The Lord himself goes before you and will be with you; he will never leave you nor forsake you. Do not be afraid; do not be discouraged.
