How do you prepare your home for a long-term visitor? Perhaps you have the room cleaned very well, the best linen on the bed, beautiful fragrant flowers on the dresser, even a chocolate on the pillow. I’m sure you spend time lovingly creating a welcoming space, a home-away-from-home.
Jesus was preparing his home within the disciples, readying their hearts for the relationship that would continue with and through the Holy Spirit. He gave them his peace, his assurance that they would not be left alone. He told them to love him and to keep his word and to believe that he would stay with them.
We too are called to invite Jesus to live within us, to abide with us. But how do we prepare the room for him? What is it that we need to do to welcome him and to make him feel at home? Scripture tells us that by keeping the commandments of Jesus and by loving Jesus, by welcoming his gift of peace and by responding to his presence, is the preparation needed for him to make his home within
us.
Is your home ready for Jesus? Is your inner sanctuary prepared for him? Will he find faith and love and peace here? It is time now to welcome Jesus to abide in us, to welcome him into our hearts and our lives and our homes. We are called to welcome others into our lives too and to help them to prepare a room for Jesus so that he can make a home with them as well.
There are many quotes and sayings about homes, perhaps the most widely used being “Home is where the heart is”. Home is mostly a place where we live with loved ones, a place where we experience love and love in return. Jesus is love, God is love and so we can say that home is where Jesus is, where he loves and us and where we love him, eternally. We may leave our physical home, the house or
flat, the dwelling in which we have made a home but we will always carry Jesus in our heart and we will always find a home in him.
