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Whoever dwells in the shelter of the Most High will rest in the shadow of the Almighty. I will say of the Lord, \u201cHe is my refuge and my fortress, my God, in whom I trust.\u201d (Psalm 91:1-2)

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Pastor Michael talked yesterday about finding a home in God.\xa0 A place to dwell. \xa0It\u2019s the theme of Psalm 90: God is our home.\xa0 But it is also the theme of Psalm 91, a reflection and promise of what home with God really means.\xa0

God guards, protects, and saves those who make their home in him.\xa0 God gives shelter in the storm, shade in the heat and ultimately, a place to rest.\xa0 This is what it means to have a home with God: a safe place to rest.\xa0 A place where you are known, loved, saved from the distresses and sufferings and evils of life.\xa0 A place of peace.\xa0 A home.

So whoever seeks to dwell in the shelter of the Most High finds this rest.\xa0 This place of home, of peace, of belonging.\xa0 These are the gifts of making one\u2019s home with God.

Here\u2019s the thing though: we learn in the New Testament that God also desires to make his home with us.\xa0 And that is a very good thing indeed, because having a ready home with God does not always mean that we seek that home or even dwell very often in that home.\xa0 There are a million ways that we attempt to make our own home.

We build homes of belonging with our workplace or career.\xa0 We make homes of protection and security out of our accumulation of wealth, pursuit of good health, or our relational connections.\xa0 We pursue our own means to rest through increasingly elaborate leisure activities that leave us, our relationships, and our bank accounts wiped.\xa0 And of course, there are other shelters of escape that we might pursue too: like secret or addictive ones.\xa0 Houses that our own desires and temptations lead us back to more than we care to admit.

But God knows this of us.\xa0 Since the Garden of Eden we have been slow to accept a home with God \u201cas is\u201d and have reached for something more or different, winning nothing but exile for ourselves from the only home that could ever give us rest, joy, and peace.\xa0 Indeed: the devil tempted Jesus with the words of this very Psalm to try to get him to make a home somewhere other than in a trusting relationship with God the Father.\xa0

But Jesus didn\u2019t fall for that.\xa0 No: the Word had became flesh in Jesus Christ in order to \u201cmove into the neighbourhood\u201d as Eugene Peterson puts it in his Message translation.\xa0 And in so doing, God made his home with us.\xa0 And now, through Christ, our own bodies and hearts become homes where the Holy Spirit himself dwells, taking up residence within us.\xa0

Having run away from home\u2014our good home in the shelter of the Most High\u2014that home has come to find us, to save us, to guard us, to protect us from ourselves and all the other evils of this world so that we might find just the rest that we have been searching and longing for all along.\xa0 May you find this rest in the shelter of the Almighty today.

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