We are not home yet

There are so many cliché phrases that talk about what “home” is. But what do you do when the definition of that word gets frayed? Today I was at a familiar gas station and I saw a man wearing the jacket with the logo of my favorite football team. Is that what home is? Is it the place where strangers collectively feel the destruction of storms, pray for rain, and experience the triumph and defeat around a television set? I drove past nostalgic buildings where memories danced through my head. Inside jokes made me laugh silently as I replayed a moment in time. But what do you do when the constant fabric of what used to be in your life, ceases to be constant. “Home is where the heart is,” So they say. What do you do when your heart is split in so many different pieces, each with different area codes? They say Home is where things seem the simplest…but what do you do when nothing seems simple anymore? What do you do when you are left searching for home? I think that, is when you truly get a glimpse of how the Christian walk is supposed to be. You can memorize the verses, you can read pilgrims progress, and you can talk the metaphors with the best. But when life ceases to be “comfortable,” and you are pushed out into the place where nothing seems familiar…that is when you get to see life as the great journey it is meant to be. We are moving toward something. We are traveling with a purpose. We are not meant to ride a carousel, going around in circles, surrounded by the same realizations and images. We are not meant to make houses among familiarity. We are meant to be pilgrims passing through. We are meant to be waiting on something greater, working towards a grand mission, loving and experiencing moments, but not clinging to them a long the way. That is when we realize that home is somewhere we have never known. Home is a place adorned with colors I have never seen, smells that have never reached my nose, sights that I cant imagine, people that I have met a long the way, and a God that has no adequate description or flowery words that could even scratch the surface. This is home. This is where we’re heading. And we can thank God for the joys and experiences a long the way; but on the days you feel like you can’t find security, simple remember…you are not home yet.

"I find in myself desires which nothing in this earth can satisfy; the only logical explanation is that I was made for another world” C.S. Lewis