Coming Home

Home is a tricky concept. I once told someone that I had a homeless mind – a mind that isn’t root anywhere (geographically speaking) and so finds it hard to root itself in the world in general. One of my favourite writers, the great Czech Milan Kundera, writes: In the mind of a woman for whom no place is home the thought of an end to all flight is unbearable’. For years this sat like a personal mantra but there is one fundamental problem with it – at least, when you start to look through the lens of a Christian and a Theologian.

Home is not a spatial entity, nor is it a temporal one. That place you go to every night and go to bed is a home, sure, but at the same time it isn’t. If you buy a travelcard on the London Underground it comes in a small wallet that looks like this:

It’s a lovely sentiment. I live in a student block, in a room that’s a bit like a cupboard. I’m working hard to make it less clinical – posters, fairy lights, family photos, personal trinkets – but it really is still a university room that I will move out of in a few months time (and into another similarly clinical cupboard). For now, it’s ‘home’. It’ll do.

But I don’t agree with it – not ‘ultimately’. How fleeting and transient is our time here, in our little homes. We’re killing time until we go Home. Capital H. Our home is in the love of the Lord. Wherever we are we are home if we love and trust in Him. Consider Psalm 91:

I will say to the LORD, “My refuge and my fortress, My God, in whom I trust!”

To me, God can be a duvet – warm and comforting, wrapping me up safely. He’s also a bubble. We are safe and protected in Him.

He’s our home. Home is where you can always run to, you can always feel safe, you can always, always find love and complete acceptance.

But above all this God is love. Pure and unadulterated. Raw and unconditional. Incredible, terrifying and true.

Always.

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