You stand on the threshold and you know it’s a party on the inside. You can hear the sound of music and laughter, dancing feet and clapping hands. It sucks you in. It calls you forward, not back. It draws you outside yourself into something lighter than the weight of the world. You hear something louder than the slow poisonous leak from daily circumstance that pools voices in your brain.
Can’t help it, you just have to smile.
And when you meet their faces and you meet their eyes and see them for who they are, you know it’s because they are alive and enjoying that living. You know that they are real. And their hearts are genuine and their love is genuine and their respect is genuine. You know it.
It’s bigger than a knowing, deeper than a feeling; a truth as constant as soul and mind and body and spirit. These people are real.
Because they hear His voice and they abide in Him and they walk with Him and they know Him. They judge according to that standard, the sound of His voice; and deal in rightness and justice and mercy and grace above and beyond the human capacity to demonstrate. They are miraculous and beautiful. Each one is maturing to a higher calling, going for a better thought, reaching the next goal according to Him.
If you ever have to fall and get back up or run away like the prodigal and return home, I hope you do it around them. Because they pick you up and they surround you. They shelter you and protect you and prod and encourage you. They hold you up and they let you go. You might be surprised. Because they will see you. They will see the you that is now. And the you that will be. And the you that has always been. It’s not that they forget or that they lie or overlook, it’s that they don’t need to see the past when they define you. They rest in a position of knowing you based on their relationship with Him.
Something about that, about the purity of a love and respect that they have captured, is glorious and testifies loudly to Yahweh of a people of character. Not only do they overcome circumstance, they overcome your circumstance, too.
For a moment, perhaps, you might feel uncertain. Maybe you are unsettled. Maybe your chest clenches. Maybe your insides crumble. Maybe they don’t. Maybe they never will. Because home is home is home, you know. And when you’re home, you are home.
It’s not something you do. It’s just something you are.