Longing for Home

In his sermon, "The Longing for Home", Tim Keller preached:
"all human beings were made for home that they've lost"...In Genesis 2, it says, "the Lord God planted a garden in Eden...and there he put the man whom he had formed".  Here we see that man was given the perfect home but because of sin (Genesis 3), we lost it.  In Keller's words, "All of us are in a form of exile (Jeremiah 29)...because sin, by its very nature, casts us out of home". Keller reminds us, "This is not the home that we are built for...God is the home that we are missing (Psalm 90)...The Bible makes sense of it, the home that our heart seeks, even the home that our heart remembers...its the collective memory of Eden, of God...God is the home that we somehow remember...Eden, the face of God, walking with Him in the cool of the day is what we are after but fail to get (Isaac Watts)"... This world is not our home but Keller says, "don't be despondent".  Instead, "look to the tears of Rachel" (Jeremiah 31).  In v. 16, the Lord says, "Keep your voice from weeping, and your eyes from tears...they shall come back from the land of the enemy. There is hope for your future..." There is hope because as Keller explains, "God's not just talking to Israel, He's talking to the human race.  There's an ultimate exile and (God's) going to eventually bring (us) back...So, as Keller puts it-  dry your tears Rachels, there is hope."