Longing for Home

Home. Is it the childhood house you grew up in or the current city in which you live? Maybe it’s a particular moment in time, like a summer you look back upon fondly or the years when your children were young? Or perhaps it’s the people with whom you can be your authentic self?

How exactly do you define a complicated term that evokes comfort and belonging for some, carries baggage for others, and for most of us, a longing for something just beyond our reach (Ecc. 3:11). Who or what or where is your home?

I’ve moved seven times in just fifteen years, and as I’ve pondered and prayed through each new home, I’ve come to define home as the feeling of being deeply known by others and knowing them in return.

It’s the people or time or place where you feel safe and secure, not because everything is okay, but because you are held in genuine community. It’s knowing that no matter what may come, friends will show up and accompany you every step of the way. It’s an interdependence upon others and the joyful realization that not only do others need you, they actually want you! Home is where love is given and received.

But even our most cherished moments of home fall short of perfect love. Scripture offers us a deeper vision of our true home. In Psalm 90:1 Moses prayed, “Lord, you have been our dwelling place throughout all generations” (NIV, emphasis mine). The CSB translates “dwelling place” as “refuge,” and The Message paraphrase states: “God, it seems you’ve been our home forever.”

Which raises the question, what if our ache for home isn’t about a particular place or time—but a Person? The person of Jesus?

Friend, God is love. (Not love is God. That’s a fallacy.) Many of us have heard 1 Corinthians 13 read at weddings, but the actual context for this passage is a local church. Paul is instructing the Corinthians on how to practice Christlike community, and his number one directive is to practice love. Not feel-good love, or convenient love, or self-love, but the very sacrificial love of God.

It might be new for you, but try reading the following passage by substituting God for love.

Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. Love never fails. (1 Cor. 13:4-8)

So if God is our home—the who, what, when, and where of home—why does home remain so elusive?

Because “the perfect” has not yet come (1 Cor. 13:10, CSB). Jesus has not yet returned. You see, we live in the already/not yet aspect of church history where Jesus has already risen victorious over sin and death and sent his Spirit to dwell within us. However Jesus has not yet returned to destroy sin and death once and for all.

Paul explained in 1 Corinthians 13:12-13: “For now we see only a reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known. And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.”

There is a coming a day when both our physical and spiritual homes will be united and made complete in Christ. Christ will return, death and the devil will be put away, and we will be redeemed citizens of a new heaven and a new earth. Heaven will literally come down to earth!

In Revelation 21, John describes our future home this way:

And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, “Look! God’s dwelling place is now among the people, and he will dwell with them. They will be his people, and God himself will be with them and be their God. ‘He will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death’ or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away.” (Rev. 21:3-4)

Don’t miss this: God is our home. He is the only one who knows and loves us fully. (And yes, even if you are dead in sin, you are still perfectly loved. And God desires that you would experience true life in him.) And while we partially know and love him now, one day, we will know him fully and love him more completely. Our future is life-giving community with God and others.

But perhaps the best news is that we don’t have to wait to experience that life-giving community with God and others. “God’s love has been poured out into our hearts through the Holy Spirit,” which means that you and I have the calling and equipping to give and receive such love today (Rom. 5:5).

So consider, how can you be someone’s “home” this week? How can you be someone’s safe place by showing them gospel love? You might consider everything from inviting your new coworker to lunch to providing a listening ear for a grieving friend and not rushing her through her sorrow. (Hint: Don’t offer advice or suggestions unless asked and don’t presume to know how someone else should “properly” grieve.)

How can you receive the gifts of “home” this week? Who can you invite into your life or open up to so that they may also have the blessing of giving love? If you’re a parent or work with kids, consider asking a child to assist you with something not because you need a task completed but because your genuinely desire their partnership. Reversing the power dynamic allows the child to be the one “giving” and you to receive their act of service.

And let’s be honest: To give and receive love is risky. It’s takes boldness, courage, vulnerability, and the willingness to enter into cringey moments. You might be rejected, laughed at, ignored, dismissed, or ridiculed. The prophets were. Jesus was. The disciples were.

But you might also get to participate in a bit of heaven crashing into earth as God’s love is made real.

I’m praying Ephesians 3:16-19 over all of us today:

I pray that out of his glorious riches he may strengthen you with power through his Spirit in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith. And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power, together with all the Lord’s holy people, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge—that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God.