Always at Home, Really?

When I think of home I think of family. A safe place full of familiar sights and smells and sounds. Home is where we belong at the end of the day.

As time passes though, things can change what or where home is. A child that moves out of the house to go to college and then to their own home must have those years that home seems far a way where Mom and Dad live.

A death or divorce can change what home feels like. It’s not the same without that person there.

I can think of any number of places that have been home for me. As time changes, home changes.

Or does it?

God calls us strangers in this world:

To God’s elect, strangers (exiles) scattered through the provinces of Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia and Bithynia ( you insert your own address), who have been chosen according to the foreknowledge of God the Father, through the sanctifying work of the Spirit to be obedient to Jesus Christ and sprinkled with his blood:

Grace and peace be yours in abundance. 1 Peter 1:1-2

Home is more than a place. It is God with us. God lives in the temple of our hearts right now. We live in his Kingdom. Not a place we see with our eyes of flesh but through our eyes of faith. His kingdom grows as God scatters his people throughout the globe and they gather in more to know the love of Jesus. We live in this world but we are not of this world.

It must be a huge comfort for a child at their first day of school or college or moving into their own apartment to know that where ever they are, they are still home because they are with their Abba Father. I love that kids can know that where they feel the safest like the kitchen at home is how they can feel with God – right now and in heaven.

We love to give our kids a safe warm home where they can be nurtured in love. That is what God gives us. Life with him, home with him even in the darkest days of change. We are strangers on this earth, but with Jesus we are chosen and safe now and forever.