Birth Pangs

Homesick for perfection?
Can you hear the sighing of the wind?
Beyond the pain of pride
Beneath the sting of fear
Above the silence of forgetfulness

Homesick for restoration?
Can you feel the pulse of the longing seas?
Crunching through the shadows
Trusting in the darkness
Above the whispers of bitterness

Homesick for satisfaction?
Can you sense the silence of the mountains?
Pushing for so much more
Gasping for redemption
Above the pain of sickness

Homesick for realization?
Can you see the dimness of the stars?
Waiting for restoration
Singing but still dreaming
Above the waves of silence

Things aren't the way they seem
Homesick for eternity
Longing for rebirth
Waiting for resurrection
Above the shadows of the earth

"'Live each day as if it were your last day on earth. One of them will be. You have your orders--I send you to battle. You are a soldier, and I would not promise a soldier ease. I promise you difficulty, but with it resources and purpose and joy.' As long as we're still here in the parched wastelands of the present earth, God calls us to offer refreshment to a world full of people dying of thirst. What should we offer them? Exactly what they thirst for--a person and a place. Jesus is that person. Heaven is that place."--Randy Alcorn

"All around us we observe a pregnant creation. The difficult times of pain throughout the world are simply birth pangs. But it's not only around us; it's within us. The Spirit of God is arousing us within. We're also feeling the birth pangs. Theses sterile and barren bodies of ours are yearning for full deliverance. That is why waiting does not diminish us, any more than waiting diminishes a pregnant mother. We are enlarged in the waiting. We, of course, don't see what is enlarging us. But the longer we wait, the larger we become, and the more joyful our expectancy."--Romans 8:22

"Why do we not know the country whose citizens we are? Because we have wandered so far away that we have forgotten it. But the Lord Christ, the king of the land, came down to us, and drove forgetfulness from our heart. God took to Himself our flesh so that He might be our way back."--Augustine

"Most of us find it very difficult to want 'Heaven' at all--except so far as 'Heaven' means meeting again our friends who have died. One reason for this difficulty is that we have not been trained: our whole education tends to fix our minds on this world. Another reason is that when the real want for Heaven is present in us, we do not recognize it."--C.S. Lewis

"I once scorned ev'ry fearful thought of death, When it was but the end of pulse and breath, But now my eyes have seen that past the pain There is a world that's waiting to be claimed. Earthmaker, Holy, let me now depart, For living's such a temporary art. And dying is but getting dressed for God, Our graves are merely doorways cut in sod." --Calvin Miller

"The church is constantly being tempted to accept this world as her home . . . but if she is wise she will consider that she stands in the valley between the mountain peaks of eternity past and eternity to come. The past is gone forever and the present is passing as swift as the shadow on the sundial of Ahaz. Even if the earth should continue a million years not one of us could stay to enjoy it. We do well to think of the long tomorrow." --A.W. Tozer