Standing at the Gate
It is a sad thing to stand at the gate of where home used to be and now it is
not. You stand like a stranger, a guest without a welcome, at a gate that once
swung open to your touch.
You have no right to open it now, no right to smile and step inside and say ‘I’m
home.’ You stand outside; the warmth and the welcome that was once yours by
right is now locked. Everyone inside the gate is a stranger to you and you feel
like an alien to everyone outside.
I know because I have stood there.
Like passing generations, you repeat sadly, ‘I am a passing guest, as all my
forefathers were’. It is a collective admission of insignificance by a
disappearing people - a people who have no right to call this world ‘home’.
So where do you go to go home?
Like a little dark swallow, you slip into a cave to hide from a world that has
shut its gate on you.
But wait. A cave is not your home. Even the swallow and the sparrow are given
more wonderful apartments than caves. Listen, "Even the sparrow finds a home,
and the swallow has her nest where she rears her brood beside your altars, Lord
of Hosts, my King and God." (Psalm 84).
You see, He has already prepared a place for you where the gate is always open
so tell the world and invite everyone you meet to come with you. ‘If I go and
prepare a place for you, I will come back and take you to be with me that you
also may be where I am.’ (John 14:3)
In the meantime, open the gate of your homelessness and let Him put His altar
there to make His home your own.
Elizabeth Price