Going Home by A. Rathbun

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Jan 3, 1871

Going Home.

By A. Rathbun

Oh! the magic of these words! How they cheer the lone, weary traveler, and smooth life's rough pathway, and light up the valley of the shadow of death. The fairest pleasures of earth are made more captivating and glorious by them; and in the hours of temptation and conflict, they fall like inspiring music on the ear.

Going home! It may be a season of prosperity with you, dear reader; roses fair are strewn along your homeward path. Wealth, honor, fame, and earth's fairest jewels may be yours. Death, perhaps, has not entered your family circle and removed the dearest and most loved ones, and blighted the sweet prospect of earthly bliss; nor the storms of misfortune swept over you; but in green pastures and beside the still waters have thy joyful feet been led. The grateful expression of your heart should be, “Bless the Lord, O my soul, and all that is within me bless his holy name.”

But life, perhaps, wears a different aspect from this. Its sunshine has passed away and left you in gloom and sadness. The sweet buds of hope have withered in your grasp, and thorns and briars have sprung up in your road. You have to bear the yoke in your youth; and care is early stamped on your brow. All looks cheerless and dark around you. But stop; think one moment; is there no hope to shed its radiance on your path? Have you lost sight of this blessed promise, “Weeping may endure for a night, but joy cometh in the morning”? Joy cometh! Yes, for you; though here you may not realize it, yet Heaven had it in reserve for you. The long, dark night of anguish is wearing away. Only a few more days of sorrows, disappointments, and trials sore. A few more conflicts, a few more tears, and the night of sorrow will close. Then the glad morn of eternal day will bring to our view scenes of endless joys.

And with such a future before you, can you not cheerfully endure the trials of life? You are going home; and will not the pleasure of that glorious home where angels dwell amid the sea of bliss, amply compensate you for the troubles you now experience? Then “God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes; and there shall be no more death, neither sorrow, nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain; for the former things are passed away.” Rev. 21:4. Is not this enough to make you patient in tribulation? Are the sufferings of this present time worthy to be compared with the glory that shall hereafter be revealed in you?

Going home! Is it so, bereaved Christian? Then let us comfort one another with these words. We may weep beside the graves which are hallowed to the memory of the departed; but the sunshine of Heaven shall illumine our tears and bring a rainbow of promise over our hearts. True, our friends cannot return to us; for the hand of death has laid them low in the dust. They need not our tears, neither do they know the bitter wailings of our sad hearts. We call; but there is no answer. The sweet voice that once gladdened our ears, is now hushed, silent, cold, and still. They are sleeping that sleep which nought can break till the glorious resurrection morn, when the voice of the Archangel shall break the power of death, and bring to life the slumbering dead. Oh! blessed thought—ere long we shall be clasped in their embrace, and gladdened by their converse; and as we think of the glad meeting which will restore us to each other and banish in a moment the pain of past separation, the distance now between us seems to lessen; and we say to ourselves, Patience, sad heart; bear up a little longer; we shall be at home presently.

Going home! How soothing is this assurance to those humble believers who have no earthly home; to those who, through bereavement or reverse of fortune, have been thrown among strangers, and who often sigh for the generous sympathy and the fond endearments which surrounded them in earlier years. In moments of loneliness and gloom, let us soften all hard thoughts of our present condition by the refreshing contrast which a coming future unfolds to us. Will not the fair vision of our home above help to make us more patient and contented under the privations which we now endure? We are solitary and neglected here, and our aching hearts sometimes yearn for the love that others enjoy; but there we shall no longer be orphans, but children at home, and that for ever and ever. All the tenderest feelings and all the social instincts of our nature will then be perfectly satisfied, and our warm and out-gushing affection be fondly and fully reciprocated.

Going home! Here we have no continuing city; but we seek one to come. We are strangers and sojourners upon the earth. And we rejoice in the fact. We are glad that this world is not our rest. We would not like to think that our fairest hopes and our brightest joys were already realized, and that we were never to expect release from care and disappointment. Amidst our various trials and temptations, when sin grieves and when bereavement saddens us, how it comforts our hearts to feel that there is an inheritance incorruptible, undefiled, and that fadeth not away, reserved in Heaven for us! And in our happiest hours, as we remember how mutable and insecure are life's best joys, we check all anxious forebodings that would disturb our peace, by the thought that there are purer and more perfect pleasures stored up for us in the future.

Going home! Let this be your cheering motto, the bright pole-star by which you steer your bark. Going home—a home with Jesus, a home in Heaven.

“Home, home, bliss to the parted ; Friends, friends, meet on its shore ; Here, here, lonely they've left us ; Soon we'll be parted no more. Home, home, home, home— Friends will be parted no more. “Home, home, let us now hasten ; See, see, angels above ! Hark! hark! now do they call us Home to their dwelling of love. Home, home, home, home— Home of our Father's kind love.”

A. RATHBUN.

Peoria Co., Ill.