Where is Home?

I have been thinking a lot about home lately. Recently I flew back from Africa to join Patty and meet our new granddaughter, help another daughter and husband move out of our home in Colorado to a place of their own, put our house on the market, and buy another home where we can shut the door and have no worries when we are in Fish Hoek.

In between all this, I began a book project about finding home- inspired from Jesus last teaching to His disciples the night before His death-and for some reason I can’t get the old John Denver song out of my head;

 “Country roads take me home, to the place I belong…”

Perhaps you understand why “home” is on the front and center of my prefrontal cortex. Where is home? South Africa, Colorado, where family and friends live, where is that “place that I belong?” As I counted up all the places over the years I have called home that number is quickly approaching 20. So home has to be more than a place where we dwell. And as for family and friends-they live all over creation so it’s hard to define that as home.

So where on earth is there a place called home-where I truly belong? The other morning I was reading from a man who traveled around a lot and for the last 40 years of his life he was constantly on the move living in a tent. Yes, Moses knew something about transition and leaving the security of a palace in Egypt to become a shepherd nomad who had no permit place to call home.

Moses words in Psalm 90 leave us with profound wisdom for our journey through life, right away in verse one he lays before us this great truth:

  “Lord, through all generations You have been our home! (NLT)

 In that one sentence you have the most important truth in all of life. All of Scripture given to us by the Spirit of God leads us to our real home-the only place where we truly feel we belong.

As the early church leader Augustine so rightly said,

 “Our heart is restless until it rests in You oh God!”

 We will never find the perfect place with the perfect people on this earth where we can find true peace; we will be forever “restless” in the search. Our heart’s true REST can only be found in knowing our home IS IN the Father’s arms of LOVE.

Moses encountered “his home” one day looking after sheep, it took the form of a burning bush and a heavenly voice declaring, “I AM.” What an astounding way for Moses to understand where his true home was (see Ex. 3). After that day Moses knew where home was and it wasn’t back in Egypt or even in the land of promise, it was daily dwelling in His Father’s eternal house of unfailing love.

This is why Moses could pray later in Psalm 90:

“Satisfy us each morning with Your unfailing love, so we may sing for joy to the end of our lives!” vs. 14 (NLT)

As we approach Holy Week, meditate on how the suffering, death, resurrection of Jesus, “The Great I AM” is all about bringing you to the Father’s heart of love. His love for you, this is your true home. Sin pushed us out of the garden; but Jesus’ finished work brought us back in. This “heavenly garden” is the only place on earth where you can truly be satisfied and find a true home, a place of rest in a restless world.