Living is learning the meaning of words. That does not mean the long ten syllable words we have to look up in the dictionary. The really great words to master are short ones—work, love, hope, joy, pain, home, child, life, death.
~Halford E. Luccock (1885-1960)
“I will not leave you as orphans; I will come to you. Yet a little while and the world will see me no more, but you will see me. Because I live, you also will live. In that day you will know that I am in my Father, and you in me, and I in you. Whoever has my commandments and keeps them, he it is who loves me. And he who loves me will be loved by my Father, and I will love him and manifest myself to him.” Judas (not Iscariot) said to him, “Lord, how is it that you will manifest yourself to us, and not to the world?” Jesus answered him, “If anyone loves me, he will keep my word, and my Father will love him, and we will come to him and make our home with him.
~ Jesus, King of the Universe in John 14
Oh beloved, there is one good space in this world. Well surely there are many… But this place is the best. And it is so very good to be there.
Home.
Last year, this writer picked up and moved his body and his stuff some 15,000 kilometers away from where he had spent over three of the decades of his four-and-a-half decade life. i am a citizen of heaven, but carry a passport from the United States.
And now, after a mere 40-day decision cycle, i went from being single, to being married to the woman of my dreams, and father now to six children. Five are mostly grown, but there is still one in the house – a 5-year-old Indonesian lost boy now found – and taken into this bondservant’s household.
The transition to the beautiful – and somewhat enigmatic – Java region of Indonesia has been and still is deliciously tumultuous. Changes include a new wife and kid, a new job (with 315 secondary students), different culture, different language, different money, different church, much air and water pollution, crazy traffic, different food, and a nagging tendency towards “maybe it will get done tomorrow” (which i thought i left behind in Central America)… Oh, and other than the above, just about everything else has changed about my life too; except one thing.
i never left Home.
As this writer went (and is going) through the multiple waves of culture and relational shock, one thing has become increasingly apparent. For the true believer, Jesus is absolutely everything. As gorgeous and wonderful as romance and family and adventure and work and everything else can be – nothing compares to the deep knowledge that our true home is in the One who never moves and never changes.
It is well-said that home is where the heart is, for He is our very heart and Life and Love. Might we all ever remember the truth that all the other things in our lives (however blessed they are) are but shadows of the true Light who is the Source of all real blessing in the first place.
In Him, we are home. And this, as He makes His home in us.
