Few words in frustrate me as much as the word "home." In Spanish, it's casa. In Korean, 집. They all mean the same thing: your house, the domicile you go to at the end of the day, the place where you live with your family, the place where you feel like you belong, the place where you feel at rest.
The problem is, the multiple meanings makes it an easy term to reach for. We use it all the time, especially in expat circles where, "Hey, when are you going home?" can mean so many things. When am I leaving the restaurant to go back to the apartment? When am I getting on a plane to go....well, a lot of places. Context makes it comfortable, but when I sit back to think about it on larger scale, I get antsy. Of course I know context is everything in language, but stay with me. The word has been so stretched for me and applies to so many places that using it for one of them at a time feels inadequate.
Because as Once Upon a Time put it (so poignantly) a few weeks ago:
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| I know. |
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| I may or may not have thrown something at the screen. |
So I have some complex feelings about home. But one thing that I liked about that scene was that opened up the idea for multiple homes. He doesn't say, "You've got your home." He said "a home." One. A person can have many. A person can have many places that they miss at once, or at least throughout the course of one day. So when I miss the fellowship of Tuesday night Bible study in La Paz, I'm missing home. When I miss laughing with my brothers and sisters in the Bay Area, I am missing home. When I miss watching soccer games over sunsets with students who call me "Teacher" in Korea, I am missing home.
During the Fall, I shared during our teacher devotions time about this concept and its symptom, homesickness. Another teacher had just had a talk about it during chapel when I was turning it over in my mind, so I expanded on it. In our school community, we are all subject to homesickness or restlessness. The North Americans miss the US, the other foreigners miss their homelands, the native Bolivians might miss the area of Bolivia from which they hail, and we all are prey to the feeling that there's somewhere else we need to be.
As Christians, we all have a longing for somewhere else. These feelings of homesickness or wanderlust are not merely cravings of an earthly nature. We belong in heaven and we'll be there someday, but for now we only get tastes and glimpses of it.The Bible tells us that our citizenship is in heaven and that it will be wonderful.
Even more encouraging to me is the thought that Jesus knows what this is like. He left heaven to wander on earth for 33 years as part of his ministry. Beyond that, Jesus paints himself as a shepherd with believers as his sheep. What he does as a shepherd is incredible - not only does he lay down his life, we also have all the promises of Psalm 23.
So when I feel "homesick" or feel tied up in knots about my angst over the word "home," I try to remember this. My home is in heaven, but until then, I have Jesus as my shepherd. With him guiding me, I know I'm exactly where I should be.
