I missed writing
my last blog entry due to another family crisis out of state. In March of this
year I lost my father. Now the trips revolve around the battle against cancer
being fought and lost by my mother-in-law. The generation preceding me is
disappearing one by one. With them goes the link to earlier years, and all that
is left to us are the memories of what once defined home.
For the
first twenty-seven years of my life, one address defined home, that Kentucky
farm. I may have left to go to college and seminary for eight years, but that
was time spent away from home, not establishing a new one. Mom and Pop were
always there. The old farmhouse was always there. That address represented
stability, acceptance, and peace, concepts sometimes hard to find out in the
bigger world.
Now the farm
has been sold to the neighbors who continue to till the land. My father died
four months ago, and Mom resides in a nursing home. Since graduating from
seminary and getting married, I have lived in three other states and had ten
other addresses. Not what you would call a prime example of stability.
“Home is
where the heart is” is an anonymous proverb many of us have used to try to
describe our effort to replace a sense of rootlessness with some sort of
security. It has been a movie title and song titles unnumbered. It is a way to
say when earthly roots no longer exist, we can find a place of security and
acceptance wherever we find relationships based on love.
When we look
at the life of the Apostle Paul, we see someone who could have readily
identified with the old proverb. Born in Tarsus in what is now eastern Turkey, Paul
studied in Jerusalem (Acts 22:3), and then found himself settling in Antioch of
Syria as a Christ-follower (Acts 13:1). From there his missionary journeys took
him through various parts of the eastern Roman Empire and perhaps by some
accounts into France and/or Spain. The Apostle would have had a hard time
defining a geographical location he could call home.
Perhaps that
is why he felt so strongly about another destination (Philippians 3:20). His
calling as a missionary with the Gospel of Jesus Christ had left him without
roots in any city or region. He could claim to be Jewish by blood and
tradition, but that had all been superseded by his relationship with Jesus
Christ. This world was no longer his home. Though born a Roman citizen, his
primary loyalty was to the Kingdom of God. Home was in the Divine Presence.
Living in
four different states, watching family members move farther and farther away,
and then eventually watch them die all contribute to destroying the sense of
stability that living on one plot of ground can provide. When time becomes less
important and relationships become the priority, then home takes on a new
shape, a new definition. Home is where the heart is.
Our lives
are in this world until death takes us out of it. Our hearts are in the hands
of the One who purchased them with his blood at Calvary. He resides in the
presence of his heavenly Father with his Holy Spirit as the guarantee of his
presence with and in us. Home for the believer becomes the presence of God, the
presence of his Kingdom. Thus we can say home is where the heart is for that is
where we reside in the presence of God.
Eternal life
in the Kingdom of God begins with surrender and obedience to Jesus, the Son of
God (Luke 17:20-21). With that miraculous transformation which can only be
understood in its fullest form by God, our homes are transferred from the world
of the profane to the world of the sacred. My home is now where my heart is,
held close to the heart of God and awaiting my final journey into his glorious
presence.
