And 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. You know the way to the place where I am going.
John 14:3-4 (NIV)
He Comes Back for Them
He went out in September to start the job, and she stayed behind with the boy until the school year is done. It was going to be six months. Nobody has said six months since November. The photos he sends are no use to her. A hallway shot from too close, a corner of a counter, the yard from an angle that makes it look like somebody else’s yard. He tells her it’s bigger than it looks in that one.
She has asked twice about the kitchen and got an answer both times and still can’t picture it. What she can picture is him standing inside the arrivals door, and she has stopped putting a month on it.
He’s going away, and he says so plainly. And 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. Jesus puts that in front of eleven men on the last night he has with them, and then he tells them they already know the way to where he’s going.
One of the eleven says a minute later that they don’t know the way at all, and Jesus answers him with himself. He’d given them his word that he’d come back and a reason for coming, and the reason was that they’d be where he is. They were left with his word and with the one who gave it.
The going is the preparing. He doesn’t leave them with a description of the place, and nothing in the passage suggests he thought they needed one. What he leaves them is the coming back, and himself at the end of it.
I’ve spent evenings trying to picture a place I have never been told anything about, and come away with nothing and called it doubt.
She stops asking about the kitchen sometime in February. After that what she asks about is him.
A Prayer to Remember
Lord Jesus, I’ve wanted a description of the place more than I’ve wanted you, and I’ve gone looking for one in books that don’t have it. You told them you’d come back and take them where you are, and you gave them yourself for the whole of it. Hold me to that on the nights I want a floor plan.
In Jesus’ name I pray. Amen.
