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Recently we invited over a new family in our community. After dinner, they quickly began cleaning up toys in the living room and shuffling their toddlers toward our front door. I assured the mother that we were in no rush and to sit down and relax. “But I don’t want you to be sick of us,” she protested. I was a bit taken aback—maybe she’d been reading Proverbs: “Let your foot be seldom in your neighbor’s house, lest he have his fill of you and hate you” (Prov. 25:17).
Although we certainly desired their company, she reflected an intuitive social understanding that people have limits for each other’s presence and proximity. After all, there can be such a thing as neighbors who are too familiar, family vacations that are too long, and people whose presence seems too constant a blessing. We usually desire proximity in doses and selectively. In the context of a fallen world, our desires, characters, and habits can cause friction when too much time (that fluctuating, subjective measure) is spent together.
This makes these words of Jesus even more astonishing: “If anyone loves me, he will keep my word, and my Father will love him, and we will come to him and make our home with him” (John 14:23). “Home”—a word that indicates proximity, intimacy, and permanence. If you’ve opened your home to longer-term guests, you know that it is a rich experience. But it also demands sacrifice and grace and needs to be motivated by love to keep going. God does more than visit; He dwells with His people.
When we think about God’s dwelling with man, we jump to “Immanuel” (Matt. 1:23), but long before that crowning incarnational moment, He wanted to dwell with His people. “Let us make man,” He said (Gen. 1:26), and He extended fellowship and dwelling in Eden. And when sin separated, He pursued His people. “I will dwell among the people . . . and be their God,” He said (Ex. 29:45), and He told Moses to put a tabernacle in the middle of the camp. When Jesus lived among us, He said that it was good for Him to leave, so that His Spirit could come and dwell in an even closer and more pervasive way.
It can be hard for people of two different cultures or personalities to live together, but that kind of distance pales in comparison to the gap between God and us. Holy with unholy. Infinite with the finite. The One whom the heavens cannot contain dwells with people limited by time and space. The triune God with no restraints or burdens gladly ties Himself to ours. He brings us, the alienated and far-off ones, near by His blood and gives us life and makes our hearts His home, never leaving or forsaking us.
We can grow weary and exasperated with weakness, but His Spirit powerfully sanctifies and renews us with blood-bought perseverance. What a privilege, then, to extend this to others by bearing one another’s burdens, exercising patience with weakness, and outdoing one another in showing honor and love.