Home

Where do you call home?  I am living primarily overseas these days in Thailand.  A lovely country.  I must admit, though, I miss my home country, the United States.  From little things like the food I was used to eating not being available (although I have also experienced a lot of great new food here), not being able to communicate as clearly as I would like, availability of products and costs (some higher now and some lower), and of course the weather (yes, the US has heat and humidity but not pretty much every day like in Thailand.  And I’m from the part of the US where the weather is much drier).  

But those things do not define what I would refer to as home.  When people ask me if I miss home, my response is always something like, “As long as I’m with my lovely wife, I’m home.  Wherever she is, that is home.”  And I mean that.  Some say that home is in the heart, and I believe that is at least partially true if not completely true.  In the song, Home, Michael Buble sings about being away from his wife, and how he misses her and thinks of "home" as being with her.  The last part of the song tells us that he is going home to be with her, which will make everything all right again.  

Let me go home
I've had my run
Baby, I'm done
I gotta go home
Let me go home
It'll all be all right
I'll be home tonight
I'm coming back home

The truth is we can be content wherever we are, if we want to, that is. Content yes, but truly home?  Let’s go a little deeper.  We know that God is our Father (“Our Father, who art in Heaven…”) who created us because He loves us and wants us to be with Him.  Even when we screw up, which we do all the time, just like the Prodigal Son in the Bible (see Luke, chapter 15), we can always go back to our Father who is filled with compassion and love for us (just like the father had compassion on his prodigal son and welcomed him back when he finally came home after spending all his father’s inheritance on earthly pleasures). Like the Prodigal Son who learned the true value of home only after being separated from it, or like Dorothy in the Wizard of Oz who learned the true value of home only after going on her yellow brick road journey – “There’s no place like home” – we also know the true value of home with God, our Father, who is in Heaven.  

Going one step further, if our ultimate goal is to be reunited with our Father wouldn’t that mean that Heaven is our home – our true home?  Do you ever get that feeling, that while we can be content here on earth, especially in the company of our loved ones, that there is still an internal yearning for something more, that we are meant to be somewhere else ultimately? I think so. I can say that my wife and I yearn to go home, that is heaven, to be united with our true Father, our Creator, our Savior.  And one day we will.  I take comfort in that.  So, for now, wherever my wife and I are together on this terrestrial ball, we are content.  But Heaven is our home.

• I’m but a stranger here, Heaven is my home;
Earth is a desert drear, Heaven is my home.
Danger and sorrow stand ‘round me on every hand;
Heaven is my fatherland, Heaven is my home.
(Lutheran Hymn) 

• (Jesus said) “Don’t let your hearts be troubled. Trust in God, and trust also in me. There is more than enough room in my Father’s home. If this were not so, would I have told you that I am going to prepare a place for you? (John 14:1-2)

• But we are citizens of heaven, where the Lord Jesus Christ lives. And we are eagerly waiting for him to return as our Savior. (Philippians 3:20)

• For we know that when this earthly tent we live in is taken down (that is, when we die and leave this earthly body), we will have a house in heaven, an eternal body made for us by God himself and not by human hands. We grow weary in our present bodies, and we long to put on our heavenly bodies like new clothing. For we will put on heavenly bodies; we will not be spirits without bodies. While we live in these earthly bodies, we groan and sigh, but it’s not that we want to die and get rid of these bodies that clothe us. Rather, we want to put on our new bodies so that these dying bodies will be swallowed up by life. God himself has prepared us for this, and as a guarantee he has given us his Holy Spirit. So, we are always confident, even though we know that as long as we live in these bodies, we are not at home with the Lord. For we live by believing and not by seeing. Yes, we are fully confident, and we would rather be away from these earthly bodies, for then we will be at home with the Lord.
(2 Corinthians 5:1-8)


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