As believers learn to abide in Christ together, we’ll grow in welcoming each other and the lost into the security we celebrate in Christ.  We all long for connection, for relationship that lasts and grows deep with healthy and enjoyable interactions being consistent and ever-improving.  What we’ve experienced, all of us to some degree, however… some level of consistency, but brokenness and imperfect flavors of what we long for being more expected.

In the story “You Can’t Take It With You,” we watch an imperfect family celebrating one another and celebrating a life of loving community over high-brow living.  God describes this hope as a grounded hope in His redemptive purposes: “My people will abide in a peaceful habitation, in secure dwellings, and in quiet resting places” (Isaiah 32:18).  How do we find our souls at home in the chaos and noise of family and friendship life?  We find it first in our LORD and our prayer and devotional life.  Then, we are more settled as people and ready to love no matter the context, ready to have the shock-absorbers of genuine godly affection no matter which human interactions await us in a given day.

We can’t take it with us friends… things and activities.  We can know that all who believe in our LORD, Jesus Christ, will be saved and taken up with Him for eternity.  We can live lives that show that we don’t plan to try to take our accomplishments and things with us to Heaven.  We have a secure hope in a perfect and loving Savior, and we rest together in Him as our HOME.

The blood of Jesus Christ has been shed to give us a righteous and sibling relationship to Jesus Christ.  We are blood-bought relatives of the living God.  We are all together, all who believe, children of the Father God.  We have the Spirit of God dwelling in us and producing righteous lives more and more every day.  We have a burning love in our hearts that reflects the Savior’s love for us, giving us courage to bear our respective crosses and endure through to the end.

“And the effect of righteousness will be peace, and the result of righteousness, quietness and trust forever” (Isaiah 32:17).