Finding Home (Audio)
Home is what we call the place we live but it may not be the place we dream about for some future time of life. Home is often looked for, and seldom ever found. Home has a warm fuzzy feeling around the edges of our thinking, while the house is nothing but a place to keep us comfortable and safe.
How do you find that place you want to call Home?
It’s a favorite scene from a movie when ET sets objects into rotation representing the universe and then points out into left field and says, “Home” indicating where he is from.
It’s Dorothy talking in the Wizard of Oz when she finally learns the power of going back home.
“No matter how dreary and gray our homes are, we people of flesh and blood would rather live there than in any other country, be it ever so beautiful. There is no place like home.” L. Frank Baum, The Wonderful Wizard of Oz
It’s that feeling of youth when you return to that place of childhood and though everything is different, it still is identified as “home“.
It’s the heartwarming children’s story (The Incredible Journey (1961), by Scottish author Sheila Burnford,) about a family who travels far away for several months and leaves their three pets with a friend. The pets are missing their human companions and band together to return home over 300 miles away. Home. It’s the continuing saga of animals who always have that innate internal sense of direction that can find their way back home.
“Home,” says Robert Frost, “is the place, where, when you have to go there, they have to take you in.”
It’s pulling into the driveway after a long trip and saying the words we all say, “I’m home.”
Home. Knowing where home is, and even if you are not there right now, you know what it takes to go there or to create one.
Where’s your home?
While studying yesterday and preparing for a teaching session, I thought about the Home Row on a keyboard. There are little bumps on 2 keys and if your index finger finds them and the rest of your fingers line up, then you are on Home Row. From there, and with knowledge of the QWERTY keyboard, I have the ability to type and type and never look at the keys. Why? I’m successfully on Home Row! My fingers know where they are and my mind directs them to talk about things! Only because they are Home.
Home. Makes me remember a song from childhood that says, “This world is not my home, I’m just a passing through…” and I think about how we make this present life so much about our comfort level and yet we yearn for a new home who’s builder and maker is God (Hebrews 11:10) It’s probably a human trait to always wish for “home” at the end of the day, or journey.
Home. Makes me remember a preached message from Lee Stoneking, and though I do not remember it all, the one thing I do recall, our life here is like a Sojourner, someone with no permanent place to call home and is simply passing through. (Genesis 23:4) We are like Pilgrims, headed on a religious journey.
Home. It’s the epitaph on Grandmother Simmon’s headstone. “Gone Home”
Home. It’s my daughter texting just minutes ago as they board for their flight from vacation. “About to board our last flight home!…Ready for my own bed!” To which I reply, “Glad you’re coming home.” Tears thinking about home.
Home. It’s Mark Lowry singing a favorite song, “Home, Where I Belong”
They say that heaven’s pretty but livin’ here is too.
And if they said that I would have to choose between the two
I’d go home, goin’ home where I belong.
Pliny, the Elder, almost 2,000 years ago made this comment and it is famous today, “Home is where the heart is”
George Moore stated, “A man travels the world over in search of what he needs and returns home to find it.”
Home, for me, is slipping back to Baytown, Texas where I was born and exploring the frame of memory that spreads like a web of those places we lived, homes we grew up in, churches we attended, schools, stores we shopped, places we worked and streets that we lived on. Deer Park. Seabrook. Channelview. Galena Park. Houston.
Home is extended to our first residence in Anchorage, Alaska. 3330 Boniface #31. It’s where my son turned 3, and my daughter’s first “home”.
Home wraps up the story of life and living. It makes me know that home is where you rest your weary bones at the end of the day. It may not be about the place, it’s more about the experience. Home can be temporary and you always look for that future place that you can exclaim, “Home!” Home is often where your family is. There are times I wish for a retreat of space and have all my family surrounding because most of what I call home is connected to people, and not a place.
My thought today is simply this. There is no greater peace to have it settled in your mind and heart than to know where your home is…and make plans to visit every so often… It’s good for the mind and soul!