In this strange season of pandemic and quarantine, home has taken on a whole new meaning. It is no longer the retreat from work, school, and life that it was intended to be, but instead has become the center of it all. What was once was a sanctuary has become an office, a classroom, a gym, a restaurant, and for some, may feel like a prison. Home is supposed to be a place where we feel safe and secure. The people we know best and love most live there. At home, we can find who and what we need when life becomes overwhelming and we need a place to both regroup and recharge. Yet, these days, it is easy to find yourself home-less—not because you don’t have a home, but, for a variety of reasons, you choose not to be there. You may be physically present, but spiritually absent.
I recently read a story about a dad trying to juggle work and childcare in the same space. He had tried everything he could think of to occupy his young son so he could get some work done, but nothing worked. As he stared at his overflowing desk and fretted, he saw a magazine flipped open to a large picture of the earth taken from space. It only had a few colors in it, and not much detail, which would make it a difficult puzzle to put together—then he had an idea. He tore it out and tore it up, handed it to his son, and said, “Take this puzzle in the other room and don’t come back until you are finished.” Just as the dad finished his first small task and his second deep breath his son came running back, declaring it done. “How can this be?” the dad asked his son. “It was easy,” the boy replied. “There’s a person on the other side of the page. When you put the person together, you put the world together.”
Our Home is Permanent
In our search for the peace and comfort of home, it is easy to look at what the world offers and think the task impossible. But if we focus on the face of Christ, an ease sets in, a trust that we have the care and concern of an all-knowing, all-loving ever-present and unchanging God, and a reminder that He alone offers us a permanent home. Our home in Christ is not just an eternal one, bringing hope for the long haul, but a present one, the kind we need right now when times are tough.
When quarantine started, I missed church the most. I attended in my pajamas in front of my computer, stood for the singing, passed the peace with my husband and my dog, sent in my offering, and tried so hard to find the feeling of Sunday service. I know better, but something in my spirit thought that God was at church and without that gathering, something was missing. Then I remembered the Israelites didn’t just feel that God only dwelt at church, they knew it. God’s earthly dwelling was the Tabernacle, and His people could only access Him through priests and sacrifices until God became man, in Jesus. “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning” (John 1:1-2). Then, “The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us.” (John 1:14) When Jesus died on the cross, the curtain separating the people from God’s presence was torn from top to bottom (Mark 15:38), and our access was no longer dependent upon anything but accepting the sacrifice of Christ on the cross. Our belonging was settled, our adoption secured.
Our Home is Safe
He opened for us the kind of home that only He could. His home is a place of safety because we are fully known, yet fully loved, totally forgiven and assured of a residence with God for all eternity. This is the kind of home we long for, even if we don’t know it. I picture Dorothy from the Wizard of Oz clicking those ruby slippers together and saying out loud from a strange and far off land, “There’s no place like home, there’s no place like home,” and she is right. Home is elusive—immigrants long for their homeland, adoptive children sometimes long for the home of their birth, soldiers off at war ache for home, and we followers of Jesus, as aliens here on earth, long for our heavenly home. We search for that place where we can settle when everything around us feels off balance.
Our Home is Always with Us
Only Jesus offers that place. He is both present for us, “Christ Jesus who died—more than that, who was raised to life—is at the right hand of God and is also interceding for us” (Rom. 8:34), and present in us through the indwelling of the Holy Spirit, “Don’t you know that you yourselves are God’s temple and that God’s Spirit dwells in your midst” (1 Cor. 3:16)? Wherever we dwell, God dwells—so, though permanent, our home travels. It goes behind and before, in the darkest places and the lightest (Ps. 139). When we wander, it waits with an open door and open arms. We need never be homeless, yet sometimes we still are.
In times of struggle and stress, I search for comfort and think a home away from home will help. It doesn’t take long to find out that it won’t. I work too much then not enough, eat either the wrong things or too much of the right things, then over-exercise to correct the calories. I have already binge watched six seasons of Downton Abby, and Netflix has a list of similar series to occupy my mind. The word that best describes the state of homelessness I have occupied during this pandemic is “uncomfortable.” I have forgotten where I live.
Our Home is Found in Christ
As followers of Christ, we will never be comfortable until we find our comfort in Christ alone.
This means settling into His Word and letting the Scriptures fill my thoughts rather than the latest news or my biggest fears. It means I need to clean up the space in my mind where my sin wants to sit and keep an attitude of confession and humility. I need to keep a quiet environment around me so I can hear the tender voice of God as He reassures me of His comfort and care. I need to remember that just as my physical home reflects my personality, my spiritual home reflects my own very personal relationship with God. I need to surround myself with the beauty of God’s creation in occasional fresh flowers and the sound of uplifting music, and I need to move my body as a reminder of what a gift it is not to be literally stuck at home.
When I remember that Christ is my home, He helps me see things from His perspective. The past no longer sticks on me, the future is filled with His company, and the present rests on the promise that nothing will ever separate me from Him. Choosing His company means I have found my hearts true home, and there is no place safer than that.
