Where is home?

 

Where do you call home or perhaps more importantly, what do you call home.

Perhaps some of you identify home with the house where you grew up. You remember the sights, the sounds, the memories of Christmases, and games of hide and seek. Other perhaps think of home as your hometown. Home means your high school, festivals in the park, the county fair, parades, and the unique physical features, like the brick streets in every town around here. Since I did not grow up in just one single place, I have a couple of town and several houses that I remember, but none of them are really "home" to me.

For me, home meant people and really means people. My Mom made a house a home, and where Mom and Dad were, was home. So home for me was an apartment in the Chicago area, a trailer house in small town, a parsonage in another small town in western South Dakota, and even for awhile a parsonage in a North Dakota town 35 miles from the Canadian border. In a similar way, Traci, my wife, now makes a house a home. wherever Traci and my kids are is home.

I do not think this is a bad thing. God intends us to feel at home in special places where our people are. It can really help when your family and your community are close and welcoming because they create great memories. It is great to walk in the door of wherever you call home and be greeted by a big hug, or to come back into your home town and be greeted by name at the local diner by the table of old farmers meeting for coffee.  

As great as these things are though, they all go away. Your parents eventually die, as my Mom did last year. The old hometown changes and moves on or sometimes it dies too. Friends move away and move on. Frankly, even when you create the home for your kids, they grow up and move out (hopefully). That safe place of belonging is always changing and shifting, so where can we look to truly find home?

In John 14, Jesus deals with this question when He tells His disciples that He is going to prepare a place for them, that where He is, they can be also. Now this must have been somewhat unnerving for them, because He had become their home. He was with them right now, and yet He was telling them that He was going away. On the other hand, it was great news because He was letting them know that a better more permanent home was being prepared for them. A home that would not fade away and decay. A home where those you love will never die.

But, how does that help me now? Jesus has physically gone to heaven to make a place for His followers, but where is home right now? Where can I feel safe in a world where everything changes and storms constantly threaten to overwhelm me? Well, later in John 14 Jesus says, "And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Helper, to be with you forever, even the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it neither sees him nor knows him. You know him, for he dwells with you and will be in you." 

So for those who follow Jesus, His Spirit is with us wherever we go. In a very real sense, we are home wherever we go because Jesus is with us, and in another sense, we are waiting hopefully for our final perfect home. I would encourage you to come home to Jesus and to daily find your safety in Him so that when the storms of life come and all other homes crumble, you have a safe place to rest and hope that is secure for eternity.