David lay in bed, his heart pounding in his chest. All else was quiet and he could feel the thumping through his body. It scared him.
Earlier that day, his mother had told him about inviting Jesus into his heart and he could think of nothing else. It scared him.
How was Jesus going to fit inside of his heart? His heart was so small and Jesus was so big, as big as the universe. Wouldn’t Jesus going inside of his heart cause it to explode?
His heart thumped and he was scared.
When my friend told me that story, I laughed. But then it caused me to ask myself a question:
Do we invite Jesus into our hearts or does he invite us into his?
A whopping 164 times in Paul’s New Testament letters, he refers to us as being “in Christ.” In contrast, far less often is Christ referred to as in us (though his Spirit does take up residence in us). If there is an emphasized motion, it’s us into Christ more than Christ into us. We are the invited, the chosen, the called, the baptized, the clothed, the adopted, the known, the named. All of which has a Christ-ward direction.
We are the ship and Jesus is the sea.
When the sea enters the ship, it overwhelms it, sinks it. But when the ship enters the sea, it enters into something larger than itself, it embarks on an adventure. When the sea enters the ship, there is room for nothing and no one else. But when the ship enters the sea, there is room for many more ships, many more people, many more creatures large and small.
We can hold a thimble-full of him. But he can hold all of us, all of the world.
When we answer Jesus’ invitation to enter into his heart, we enter into the wideness of God’s love. We enter into the spaciousness of salvation. And we discover that there is room for not just us, but for others as well. As the invited-in, we become inviters of others to join us in the heart of our Lord. This is where we dwell. And this is where we long for others to dwell with us, for this is what we were all made for.
This is our home.