Home

What does it mean?

Depends on your background.

There are those who see home as the four story brick building that is part of the row of houses that runs the length of the street.

For others it is the log cabin hewn by their father and a group of neighbors who worked together to build a place where they could be a family.

Then there are those who pull their home from one stop to the next. As long as there’s a hook-up for water and sewer they can call nearly anywhere “home”.

Yet no matter where life happens it is not the structure that makes a place home.

Instead it is the things that go on there and the people who live there.

We have moved several times and no matter where we live it has never been the number of rooms or the decor that created a sense of belonging.

The attitude and actions of our family have either caused it to be a place of joy or frustration.

It is the same even today, for it takes effort to make a home.

Yes, I like to decorate, and I like things to match,

And I love to garden.

(There is something in flowers that makes me happy.)

But home is really never going to be the perfect place of order and beauty and soft words and perfect sleep on ever crisp sheets.

It can be a tiny reflection of what our hearts long for, and the home was meant to be a place of love, peace, patience, and goodness.

At times it is nothing that even resembles those things.

Piles of dirty laundry and frayed nerves and hurt feelings and stinky trash and messy sticky fingers and broken pipes and backed up sewers and…

Our hearts long to be in a place free from the bonds of this world and it is encouraging to know that there is a heaven waiting for us.

“There is more than enough room in my Father’s home. If this were not so, would I have told you, I am going to prepare a place for you. When everything is ready, I will come and get you, so that you will always be with me where I am.” John 14:2-3 NLT

And the fee for our ticket has already been paid, all we have to do is accept it.