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“HOME.” I have found that there are so many things associated with that phrase. For many, the word brings a joyous connotation. A place of belonging. A warm smile as you enter the door. The tenderness of a loving embrace. Finalizing it all off with the inhaled taste of cooling fresh-baked treats made by your favorite person in the world specifically as a surprise for you. (What can I say? My hobby is learning how to write fiction. I love the idealized versions that are generated by cranking up good memories to the max!) I find that many would easily connect with this description.
But there are also those who don’t have a place like what I’ve described. Home can mean abuse and strife. A place where you must hide from others to avoid getting hurt by those who should love you. When children must sleep in shifts to watch out for each other to stay safe from their parents and their parents’ friends. But sometimes, it is a place that’s been destroyed tied to an “old life” that is no longer possible for them.
Growing up, I was blessed with a stable home and family. I’ll never be able to understand what it is like to be on your own. The closest I can ever come is to listen to the stories of others who have been through it. Bouncing from foster facility to facility and never being certain of what will come. For some children, this is a daily thing.
The first thing that I mentioned, “a place of belonging” is intrinsic to humans. We look for it in friendships and groups. Ideals to pursue and compatriots in unified purposes.
But sometimes what we want are simpler things in life when we think about the word home. Home is where we rest and recover from the events we’ve undergone. Home can be where we lay our head down, enjoy our food, do things that we love and which give us a feeling of satisfaction. Whatever the case may be, I think it would be safe to say a home, a good home, can be difficult to find.
There is a phrase used by servicemen in the military and by their families. “Home is where they send us.”
The simplicity of this phrase reveals a deeper element that hinges on the word “us.” This single word indicates that we are not just physical beings, but ones that transcend that basic form of existence to one that thrives on deeper bonds. Home, then, becomes more than just a place but a center in our lives from which we journey forth into the fray and where we return to be restored.
That is why the phrase “Home for Christmas” always carries with it the connotation that you are going to visit your friends and family. A gathering of those who you care for and who care for you. It is a time and place when those bonds are strengthened and repaired if broken.
Home then has come to mean something else entirely than what we may have at first thought. I find it best described in this way for the purpose of this thought.
Home: Noun, a satisfying feeling of belonging that is oftentimes associated with a place or group of people that may or may not associate with a specific location.
“Home is Where the Heart Is”
This phrase is one that has been repeated to the point of becoming a cliche and lost all its meaning. However, I think we can return meaning by looking at it a little bit closer than before.
If the heart is the place of feelings, where our spirit resides, and the head is where our thoughts are then we can separate feelings from thoughts. And thus it is very possible to separate your home from your dwelling.
You may have in your head the perfect place to live and it has all that you need, here is mine. This hypothetical place has a bedroom, indoor plumbing, and a kitchen fully stocked with food. Topping it all off is a place to read my favorite stories and things to use the television/computer for. But, these things can and will eventually fall short. When time passes the novelty of it all fades away after it is given to you. They will seem normal but they cannot replace the things which truly matter.
As a military child, I have for the longest time thought; “I have a family that loves me, we live in a good house, not perfect but good, I have a few friends that I meet up with, but I don’t feel like this is my home.”
This thought process was complicated when I started hearing the Holy Spirit say “Come home to me” in November of 2019. My family, myself included, were all plugged into our church. This means we had friends, each of us had found Bible Studies to attend for spiritual growth, and we were volunteers in areas of need. As far as one could tell I had everything I could require. But I was being called to pursue what could only be described as a challenge to pursue something more than what I had.
After hearing the words of the Holy Spirit I was unable to stop hearing them. Every time I prayed and had private time with God He would repeat these words to me. It wasn’t until the summer of 2020 that these words began to make sense to me and I felt myself again at peace. It was through my parents’ insight that He revealed the meaning of what was being said.
God wanted me to feel at home in His presence. I am expecting some of you who are reading, or listening to, this to have a question about what I mean.
In Christianity, the presence of God is able to be categorized into two halves: His Manifest Presence and His Omni-Presence. Both of these are the presence of the Lord but they are different and serve different roles in our lives.
The Manifest Presence serves to provide us with more fire to our spiritual lives so that we can continue onwards and remember that He is who He says He is. The Omni-Presence plays a different role. It is a continual knowing that God is with you. You do not feel it that strongly but you can always feel it when you stop to acknowledge the Holy Spirit within you as a Christian.
Think of a fire. Its job is to produce heat. Fires have two main phases when they burn through something. We see flames and glowing hot coals. A flame crackles, moves, and is more visibly present and active while the coals last longer and produce heat for a more continuous time. A fire that heats a house will oftentimes go through cycles of flames-coals-flames-coals. It first starts as flames when we are working to set the wood on fire and get it burning. Once it is fully caught the burning goes deeper into the wood and it becomes coals that end up burning hotter than the flames themselves. But as they die down and the wood is slowly consumed a new log is put onto the fire and then flames jump forth from the coals to begin the consumption of the new wood.
The fire in this example is the presence of God and the flames are the moments of His Manifest Presence. They crackle and are easily seen to be filled with his power and energy. As you see the movement of the flames licking along the wood from the coals in the old log you can “see” Holy Spirit making moves that impact your life.
But the coals are the deeper longer lasting times of basking in God’s Omni-Presence. The quieter moments when compared to the other types. But they are still just as much God’s spirit and presence. As coals burn deeper into the logs of a fire so too are God’s movements into our being. The changes done are only as a result of these quiet times. Just as cols are unseen so too are the moments of prayer, of personal Bible reading, and just being quiet to listen for His voice as He speaks to you for the sake of conversation.
Something to remember about God is that He made us to be in His image and likeness. Jesus is both God and Man which means He can be approached about what might be considered “non-spiritual” things. He cares about the things that we do in life because we are the ones who do them. If something is important to you it will be important to Him as Jesus is your friend and God our Father. (This is not a time to get sidetracked by the theology of the trinity as interesting as it is.)
This is what He was telling me when I started to hear Him saying to me. “Come Home” He wanted for me to learn to live in his Omni-Presence as I am molded by Him into something new. But this is important for all Christians to learn. He wants us to know that even if “I” can’t feel God with me I know that He is still with me. It is in those moments that we need to get deeper with our relationship just as the fire burns deeper into the wood.
He knows us for who we are and that is frightening sometimes. But the frightening part is not that we tell someone else but that we ourselves admit what we have been hiding. When we come to God and do this, admit everything to both God and ourselves the things we don’t speak out loud in fear of what might happen causes a reverberation within us. The amount of impact it has depends on how deep it was hidden within ourselves, the subject matter’s sensitivity to us, and for how long it has been hidden. The mix of these and other elements will be different between all of us. However, the impact of getting it all out will be the same. Honesty in the relationship.
When Adam and Eve sinned in the garden their nakedness was revealed and they felt the need to make coverings for themselves. They were afraid to come as they were before God and hid themselves from Him. I have been wondering if part of the reason we are maybe lacking growth in the United States Church is because of this lack of taking the step in their faith.
There are many supposed reasons for this. I’m not going to spend time here and speculate on the exact why.
Our point here today is that home, more often than not, will be tied to people and the memories we have of them because of that relationship that exists, or existed if the person is someone we’ve lost contact with. Humans are creatures made for relationships and that includes our creator who also desires one with us which is possible through faith in Jesus Christ who came to restore it.
Next week I’ll be sharing my testimony from when I truly released the thoughts and feelings that I’d been keeping deep within myself. But until then, Courage and Godspeed.