I’ve Never Been This Homesick Before

For our light affliction, which is but for a moment, worketh for us a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory; While we look not at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen: for the things which are seen are temporal; but the things which are not seen are eternal (2 Corinthians 4:17-18).

In the late 1970s when I heard I’ve Never Been This Homesick Before it was just a pretty song, albeit sung by one of my favorite groups, The Rambos. Now, it means so much. When you were young, Maybe you are young now, did you think something like, “Well I want Jesus to come back, just not right now. I want to get married first, raise a family, enjoy life?” I did. My former pastor once asked, “Who all wants to go to Heaven?” None of us raised our hands. He seemed stunned. Another person shouted, “We thought maybe you were getting a bus load ready to leave.” Humor aside, we do have the pull of this world on us, and the love of family. Even though we have faith to believe in Jesus and Heaven we still have a sense of the unknown. So we want to go to Heaven, just not yet.

As we grow older we start to lose people close to us, friends, parents, spouses and even children. Those that were Christians have gone to their eternal home, the one promised by Jesus Himself. Let not your heart be troubled: ye believe in God, believe also in me. In my Father’s house are many mansions: if it were not so, I would have told you. I go to prepare a place for you. And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again, and receive you unto myself; that where I am, there ye may be also (John 14:1-3). The life we longed for, hopefully we enjoy it, but we realize that even in the best of times while we are happy we still face trials, conflicts, sickness. Sin constantly corrupts this present world. All around us the world is exploding with evil, just like in the days of Noah Genesis 6:5). The entire Earth, our current home, is corrupted (Genesis 6:11-12). Truth is, this isn’t our home.

Are you homesick yet?

God has put the thought of eternity in our hearts as told in Ecclesiastes 3:11, He hath made every thing beautiful in his time: also he hath set the world [eternity] in their heart, so that no man can find out the work that God maketh from the beginning to the end. Truth is, as Christians, if we are really one, inwardly we yearn for Heaven. For we know that if our earthly house of this tabernacle were dissolved, we have a building of God, an house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens. For in this we groan, earnestly desiring to be clothed upon with our house which is from heaven: If so be that being clothed we shall not be found naked. For we that are in this tabernacle do groan, being burdened: not for that we would be unclothed, but clothed upon, that mortality might be swallowed up of life. Now he that hath wrought us for the selfsame thing is God, who also hath given unto us the earnest of the Spirit. Therefore we are always confident, knowing that, whilst we are at home in the body, we are absent from the Lord: (For we walk by faith, not by sight:) We are confident, I say, and willing rather to be absent from the body, and to be present with the Lord (2 Corinthians 5:1-8).

You may not yet be homesick but there will come a day you will be. Trust the Lord to take you Home.

Dottie Rambo wrote I’ve Never Been This Homesick Before in 1977; copyright by New Spring, a division of Brentwood-Benson Music Publishing (ASCAP).

There’s a light in the window,
The table’s set in splendor.
Someone’s standing by the open door.
I can see the crystal river,
I must be near forever,
And I’ve never been this homesick before.

Chorus: See the bright light shine, it’s just about home time.
I can see my father standing at the door.
This whole world’s a wilderness, and I’m ready for deliverance.
Lord, I’ve never been this homesick before.

I can see my family gathered,
Sweet faces so familiar.
Oh, but no one’s old, or feeble anymore.
This old lonesome heart is crying,
Soon I’ll spread my wings for flying,
And I’ve never been this homesick before.

Sources: King James Bible