A Reflection on John 14:1–12, Memory, and the Homesickness of Heaven
There are certain tables that never really leave us.
Even after the house is sold, after the chairs sit empty.
Even after the people who gathered around them have gone home to God.
Some tables become part of us.
Lately, as I have previously written about, I have been thinking alot about my grandparents’ kitchen table — the same table Grandpa built with his own hands, the same table where so much of life unfolded quietly and faithfully over the years.
The table where coffee cups steamed on winter mornings, where stories were told for the hundredth time as though they were brand new, where worries softened a little under the glow of a tiffany kitchen light.
As I reflected recently in my post on Blessed Are Those Who Have Not Seen, there are some things we cannot fully explain until we encounter them in their fullness. Faith itself often works that way. Like St. Thomas, we strain to understand eternity while still living inside time. We long to see what we cannot yet touch.
“Do not let your hearts be troubled… In my Father’s house there are many dwelling places.”
John 14:1–2
There is something profoundly human about those words.
Because beneath all theology, beneath all doctrine and philosophy, every human being carries a homesickness we cannot fully describe.
The Homesickness We Carry
I think much of human life is spent searching for home.
Not merely a structure or an address.
But the deeper feeling of being fully known, fully safe, fully loved.
For some people that feeling comes while sitting on a porch at sunset, for others it comes walking into an old church filled with candles and incense.
For me, much of it came sitting at Grandma’s kitchen table.
That table represented stability in a world that increasingly feels unstable. It was one of the few places in life where time seemed to slow down. Nobody there was trying to impress anyone. Nobody cared about status or influence, algorithms, or followers.
There was simply presence.
Coffee.
Perhaps a sweet treat.
Conversation.
Love.
The older I get, the more I realize those ordinary moments were holy in ways I did not fully understand at the time. I wrote about that same sacred ordinary place in Back at Grandma’s Table, because some memories become more than memories. They become signposts.
Perhaps that is part of what Christ means when He speaks about preparing a place for us.
Because heaven is not merely escape.
It is fulfillment.
The completion of every partial joy we have ever known.
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Get 7 Free Reflections“Lord, We Do Not Know Where You Are Going”
There is something deeply comforting about the honesty of St. Thomas in John 14.
“Lord, we do not know where you are going. How can we know the way?”
John 14:5
That question feels painfully familiar.
Because most of us are trying to follow Christ while simultaneously admitting we do not entirely understand where any of this is leading.
We move through grief without understanding it.
Through suffering without explanation.
Through loss without clarity.
And yet Christ responds not with a map, but with Himself:
“I am the way and the truth and the life.”
John 14:6
Not merely, “I will show you the way.”
But: “I am the way.”
Christianity ultimately is not belief in an abstract system. It is trust in a Person.
And often that trust is built through small glimpses of grace hidden inside ordinary life.
Sometimes around kitchen tables.
Maybe Heaven Feels More Familiar Than We Think
I have often wondered if heaven will feel less foreign than we imagine.
Not because heaven is ordinary.
But because every truly beautiful thing on earth somehow points toward it.
Maybe every warm kitchen light was always a shadow of a greater light, every family meal was always echoing the heavenly banquet.
Maybe every moment of peace we experienced in this life was preparing us for something eternal.
And maybe — just maybe — one of the rooms Christ has prepared somehow contains echoes of Grandma’s kitchen table.
Not literally perhaps.
Or maybe literally in ways we cannot yet comprehend.
I do not know exactly how eternity works.
But I know this:
God does not despise the ordinary things we loved here.
Christ Himself spent much of His earthly ministry around tables.
Wedding feasts.
Sabbath meals.
Bread broken among friends.
Fish cooked over a charcoal fire after the Resurrection.
Again and again throughout Scripture, meals become places where heaven and earth touch.
Perhaps that is because tables represent communion.
Not simply eating.
But belonging.
“Blessed Are Those Who Have Not Seen”
As I reflected in my earlier post on Blessed Are Those Who Have Not Seen, faith often means learning to trust realities we cannot yet fully perceive.
We believe in heaven long before we see it.
We believe Christ is preparing a place for us even while sitting beside hospital beds, standing in cemeteries, or staring into the silence left behind by those we love.
That is not easy faith.
It is costly faith.
And yet there are moments when eternity feels strangely near.
I felt some of that while recovering from my illness in 2020 after being placed on a ventilator and hovering near death. Ever since then, ordinary moments have carried a different weight for me. Kitchen tables. Family photographs. Old songs. Quiet conversations.
They no longer feel small.
They feel sacramental.
Like tiny windows through which eternity leaks into the present world.
Philip’s Request
In John 14, Philip eventually says to Jesus:
“Master, show us the Father, and that will be enough for us.”
John 14:8
That line may be one of the most honest sentences ever spoken in Scripture.
Because deep down, that is what every human being longs for.
Something enough.
Enough peace, certainty, and love.
Enough permanence to finally quiet the restlessness inside us.
And Christ responds:
“Whoever has seen me has seen the Father.”
John 14:9
Meaning the face of God is not hidden in abstraction.
It is revealed in Christ.
In mercy, sacrifice, and communion.
In love freely given.
The same love reflected imperfectly in grandparents who quietly spent decades feeding families around worn kitchen tables.
The Table That Remains
The remarkable thing is that I still have Grandma’s table today.
It now sits in my own kitchen.
And sometimes I find myself resting my hand on the wood grain Grandpa built decades ago and thinking about all the people, prayers, meals, laughter, and grief that table has carried.
A little part of them remains there somehow.
Not magically.
But truthfully.
Objects absorb memory.
Places absorb love.
And perhaps that is why Christ speaks of preparing a place for us.
Because Christianity is not ultimately about souls floating endlessly in abstraction.
It is about restoration.
A redeemed creation.
A restored communion.
A home prepared by Christ Himself.
The older I get, the more I suspect heaven may feel less like entering someplace entirely unknown…
…and more like finally arriving where we were always meant to be.
Like walking through the kitchen door after a very long journey and realizing someone has been waiting there all along.
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