What is home? There are lots of sayings, like “home is where the heart is” or “home is where they have to take you in”. There are others but each of us define home in our own way. I have to admit, for me, home has a rather different meaning and feel, at least from my childhood. There were lots of issues in my childhood home life. Fighting parents, a brother 8 years older and no extended family around. So in my childhood, home was not a place of comfort.
Please don’t t feel sorry for me, that is not my reason for telling you about it. The reason to share this is to simply say, we all have our own picture of home. Sometimes it is real, sometimes it is longed for but either way it is a place in our own heart. At my college, there are two young men who lived on the streets of Dallas for several years. Today, they are kind, intelligent and decent young men who are doing well in school. I can only imagine what “home” means to them but I know our college is home now.
Home should be that place of comfort, support and where you can take off all of the masks you wear each day. I have a home now. It is joyous in its simplicity and comfort. It is and provides a state of mind for me. Is it perfect? Uh……no. It is home. It is safe haven, where I can hide from the world a bit, contemplate a bit, and work in my yard as worship.
In the African American church, they don’t have a funeral, they have a “home goin”. I love that, going home. Doesn’t that sound peaceful? And it is the place where the Eternal will take you in, always, every child of the Eternal on this earth, will one day get home. In that home we can take off who we think we are, who we think we must be and let the Eternal wrap us in love. And isn’t that really what being at home is about? That place where we can be who we are, unashamedly and honestly.
Here is the joy of it all, we don’t have to wait, we can be “home with the Eternal” right now. We can live in the kingdom, in the Eternal’s loving household right now. The prodigal son wanted just to be a servant at his father’s home, but instead was an honored guest. Do you know that you are the honored guest at the Eternal’s home? All that holds you back is, well, you. So today, open the door and walk into the Eternal home. Be the honored guest, the Beloved of God.
TMM