Today, as we turn back a few chapters in the gospel of John, we receive further encouragement from our Lord.  "Let not your heart be troubled; you believe in God, believe also in Me" (John 14:1). Jesus settles our troubled hearts by calling us to trust in Him (reference Proverbs 3:5-6). Jesus had just announced His upcoming departure and of Peter's denial, and this greatly disturbed His disciples.  How quickly we become unsettled when our circumstances change unexpectedly; but our Lord encourages us with this promise:  "In My Father's house are many mansions; if it were not so, I would have told you.  I go to prepare a place for you, I will come again and receive you to Myself; that where I am, there you may be also.  And where I go you know, and the way you know" (vv. 2-4). By lifting our thoughts, our eyes, our hearts, our hands and our concerns to heaven, all our sorrows and sadness are exchanged for joy and peace.  There is a home prepared and waiting for us, and our heavenly Father ready to welcome us. How greatly this should quiet our restless and weary hearts after we have traveled the road of this life - we will soon be home; and there is such happiness in returning home after a long journey! 
Our hearts should be overflowing with joy, peace and happiness after spending this past week looking upon our risen Savior and the wounds He bore on our behalf, and remembering the tender way He meets with us and comforts us in times of fear and uncertainty.  Jesus is the resurrection and the life!  And by believing we receive His life.  He has provided for us a new and living way to the heavenly Father.  "I am the way, the truth, and the life.  No ones comes to the Father except through Me" (John 14:6).  Jesus is the only way to the Father.  There is no other way, no other work, and no form of religion that can achieve for us what only Christ, in His sinless perfection, could do.  Jesus paid the enormous price for our sin by laying down His life as the sacrifice, and He opened the way for us to enter into the Divine Presence.  He alone is our Mediator. "Therefore, brothers, since we have confidence to enter the Most Holy Place by the blood of Jesus, by a new living way opened for us through the curtain, that is, His body..." (Hebrews 10:19-20).  Jesus gained us access to the heavenly Father through His death (reference Ephesians 2:18), and has deposited His life within us through the presence of His Holy Spirit; we have experienced the power of His resurrection through believing in Him and have been transformed (and are being transformed) into His spiritual body which is to be used to lead the way for others to come to salvation. Christianity was called "the Way" in the early church (reference Acts 9:2); their message rested on the truth that Jesus Christ was crucified, buried and is now alive, and is the only way to God.  "Salvation is found in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given to men by which we must be saved" (Acts 4:12). Paul, who once was a zealous persecutor of those who were of the Way (reference Acts 22:4), experienced the joy of salvation when he encountered Christ, and became a follower of the Way (reference Acts 24:14).  "I consider that our present sufferings are not worth comparing with the glory that will be revealed in us" (Romans 8:18).  May we make every effort to stay on the righteous path that Jesus has paved for us with His blood, and strive to walk uprightly in that Way so we can prepare the Way of the Lord's return (Matthew 3:3).  Let us draw near to the Lord in prayer, and remain diligent in the meditation of His Word, so we can hear His voice daily and know the way we are to walk.  "Whether you turn to the right or to the left, your ears will hear a voice behind you, saying, 'This is the way; walk in it" (Isaiah 30:21).