Recently I read a post asking the poignant question, “When do you know that you’ve come home?” In the craziness and chaos that swirls around, who or where or what causes us to drop our baggage and melt into the moment?
Simón and Garfunkel told us Home is where our thoughts escape, our music plays, and our love lies waiting for us. And I guess there is some truth in that.
For a significant period of my adult life when I talked about returning to where my parents lived, I referred to it as “going home” even though I hadn’t lived there in over twenty years, was married, and had children. Clearly not my home by most definitions.
So it begs the question: what is home and how do you know you’re there? I’m not sure I have a good answer. I’m pretty sure I know when I’m NOT home.
There is an ethereal quality to the idea of home, of being where you belong, and where you long for. Sometimes it’s the people or the memories or the scenery. And sometimes it’s just how you feel. It can be an extremely odd situation in which you arrive somewhere new or interact with someone new, and it’s just…home.
As Christians, we talk about being sojourners, pilgrims, traveling in a foreign place, with Heaven being home. And yet, there are glimpses of what home must be, thin places which encourage us to continue on down the road.
So as I think about home and how I know in this world that I’ve come home, I am challenged to do two things. First to keep journeying. Second, to do what I can with what I’ve been entrusted to encourage other travelers to keep journeying, whether it is with words or food or sanctuary.
To honor God’s call to home.
Just Sayin' 