I’ve been in college over a month now. I know…it’s crazy and still doesn’t seem real sometimes. Leaving home was very exciting, yet very scary.

As I was leaving Tupelo on August 20th with tears in my eyes, I couldn’t help but to imagine what Jesus felt like when He left home, Heaven—the most perfect place to come experience the pain and suffering on earth.

If I was upset to leave home to come to a super awesome place like Freed-Hardeman, I cannot even imagine what it was like for Jesus to leave a perfect place to come to this rotten and sin-filled world.

As I left home, I was praying and putting all of my trust in Him—trusting that He would lead me to the people I needed to find, that the people that need to see Him in me would find me, and that I would experience the things that would mold me into who I am supposed to be for Him. I was praying that God’s will be done over my own—having faith in Him and knowing that I was about to begin the most awesome four years of my life.

When Jesus was on this earth, He prayed the same prayer—except He did not have such bright days ahead like I did—His were going to be very grueling and painful. On the Mount of Olives before He was arrested by the Roman soldiers, He prayed, “Father, if You are willing, remove this cup from me. Nevertheless, not My Will, but Yours, be done” (Luke 22:42, ESV). His sole purpose on this earth was “to seek and to save the lost” (Luke 19:10, ESV), which including dying the cruel death of crucifixion for you and for me so that we could have the hope of GOING HOME—home to Heaven for ever and ever and ever.

The next time Jesus leaves Home, it will be to take His children back with Him.

“For the Lord Himself will descend from Heaven with a cry of command, with the voice of an archangel, and with the sound of the trumpet of God. And the dead in Christ will rise first. Then we who are alive, who are left, will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the lord in the air, and so we will always be with the Lord.” — 1 Thes. 4:16-17, ESV

Tupelo is not my home. FHU is not my home. This world is not my home. Heaven is my home.

And at the end of our journey, we shall bow down on bended knee and with the angels up in Heaven, we’ll sing the song of victory, “Glory and honor and dominion; unto the Lamb unto the King—oh hallelujah, hallelujah.” —We Shall Assemble