Going Home
Except for the moan and hiss of the oak logs giving way to the snarling fire, the house was silent. Just 45 minutes prior, my troop had arrived at their highly anticipated destination. The kids had crawled out of our blue 2006 Toyota Sienna mini-van that had doubled as their vehicular sleeping quarters for the last six hours or so, and, with their mother gently goading them into their assigned beds, each quickly slipped back to sleep in the comfort of more conventional bedding at “Nana’s and Pop’s house.”
It was now 4:45 am and I was the only one still awake. The roaring fire snapped and popped and cast an ethereal glow from the corner of the otherwise dark room in which I found myself. Wisps of smoke escaped the boundaries of the tumultuous fireplace by which I sat and tinged the air with the acrid smell of burning logs. Before I realized it, the searing heat from the angry fire brought the temperature of my pant legs to an intolerable level, and I was forced to reposition my chair further away from the inferno. But I really didn’t mind. In fact, the sting on my skin went virtually unnoticed due to one fact: after a 1,722 mile trip that spanned 30 hours and took my wife and four kids and me through parts of Quebec, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Maryland, West Virginia, Kentucky, Tennessee and Arkansas, I was seated right where I wanted to be. I was home. Ahhhhh.
After unpacking the car, I had prepared for bed and intended to follow my family to a much anticipated sleepy bliss. I turned back the covers, being careful not to wake my wife, and prepared to get in bed. But at the last moment I changed my mind. I put the covers back in place, and turned and walked down the three short flights of stairs in the split-level house to the den where the fireplace burned on the ground level. In the familiar room where I spent so many years of my childhood, and intermittently since, I took in the artifacts of our family’s history. I turned on a lamp to get a better look at familiar photos, antiques and other keepsakes. As I did so, I asked myself, “Why am I still awake and wandering around this old house while everyone else is sleeping?” “After driving 30 hours through snow and rain on only a few hours sleep, why am I not fast asleep like everyone else?
The answer came to me quickly. It was this: I wanted to savor the sweet sights, sounds and smells of home for which I had just paid a financial, logistical and physical price to experience. I wanted to take a moment to appreciate the familiar, to enjoy being in the one place in the world where I felt most comfortable: home. Then I turned off the light, gazed into the fire, and pondered the very concept of “home.”
When it comes to stable homes, mine was about as rock solid as they come. I was really, really blessed. In a day when people change jobs and spouses and cities of residence almost as frequently as hairstyles, my parents never did (as a matter of fact, they never really changed hairstyles either). They still live in the same house they built in 1955, five years after they married. Thirteen years later, I was born, the last of six kids. I grew up in a community where we were a very well known and established family. We had the keys to our neighbor’s houses, but it didn’t matter much, because none of us locked our doors anyway. Having such a place to call home was, and is, a great heritage and comfort to me.
But as I warmed by the fire, I was reflecting on the fact that my own children have no such physical heritage. In pursuing God’s will to make disciples in this lost world, we have lived many places. That fact concerns me at times, and this was one of those times. I sought the Lord’s mind on this issue as I have done scores of times before. By the firelight, He reminded me of another one who left his homeland and never got to provide a permanent home for his own family. “By faith he [Abraham] made his home in the promised land…for he was looking forward to the city with foundations, whose architect and builder is God (Hebrews 11:9-10).”
Yes, Abraham moved from his homeland, and moved about the promised land frequently. He gave up a “stable home” to pursue a spiritual home. But I think his faith informed him that the latter was more lasting, more “real” than the former. C.S. Lewis once said, “If I find within myself a desire that no other experience can satisfy, the only logical explanation is that I was made for another world.” Abraham, like Lewis, knew that the price to be paid in this world would be far outstripped by the reward in the next.
I love my home and hometown in Arkansas. Sometimes I yearn to live there again and sometimes I wish my kids could have what I had. I certainly wish they could be nearer family. I experience this feeling every time I return. But a great “hometown experience” is not all there is to life. Even being near family is not some right that we have, nor that we have to have, as incredibly supportive and helpful and rich as it can be when we are able to live near family. As idyllic as my upbringing was and as awesome as it is to live near family, neither of these things are what anyone was really MADE for. It is not what my children were made for, either. Doing God’s will is just not comptatible with my own convenience, nor even my family’s. To take any other opinion is for me to say that the eternal destiny of people who have never heard the message of Jesus Christ is LESS IMPORTANT than my own desires, my own dreams, my own convenience. It is also to say that it is okay for me to do my will, and to ignore God’s. Certainly I cannot do that if I call myself His disciple.
We were made for so much more than the pleasures, comforts, and conveniences of this life. Even some of the good things can get in the way of the GREAT things. Ultimately, we were made for another world, another home. And when we get there and “unpack our bags” and curl up beside the indescribable heat and light of the King of Kings and Lord of Lords, we will experience home in a way that surpasses our wildest imaginations and exceeds even the most perfect home in this world. And that homecoming will make the journey worth it all.
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Addendum: This trip home was the last time I ever spoke to my mom face-to-face. She died on August 21, 2009 from a heart attack and complications from surgery to remove cancer. Oh, how I wish I were able to spend more time with her in her final months in this world! But that was not God’s call nor His will for me. But I remember vividly the last words Mom ever spoke to me before she died. We talked on the phone, and she reassured me that it was okay that I could not be there for her surgery, because she said she believed God wanted me to be in Montreal to share Christ with the lost. Then her last words were these: “I will talk to you when I get out of surgery, or, if not, I will see you in heaven. Either way, I am ready. I am not afraid of going home to be with my Lord. I am at peace. See you soon, or see you in heaven.”
I know that my mother is experiencing “what no eye has seen, nor ear has heard,” in the presence of her Maker, Lord, and Savior. She is home.
Engage more lost persons relationally for Christ through a) Prayer-walking b) “Exploring” and c) Storying in