Home

Our home yesterday (Feb 1), with tree cutting in progress.

For we know that if the tent that is our earthly home is destroyed, we have a building from God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens. - 2 Corinthians 5:1

I attended a well-known worship conference last week, and while there, four or five times I was asked, “Where are you from?”  It’s a common question whenever pastors gather together, and in this case, the same when pastors and church musicians gather from around the country.

But these days when I get asked the question, more often than not, I answer by first saying, “That’s a complicated question.”

Where are you from?

Susie and I have been in western Pennsylvania almost a decade; we are now in our second community since moving east.  Before then we lived in three locations together in Southern California, and a couple of locations each elsewhere in California before we married.

But. 

Susie is originally from the farm belt of Iowa; I am originally from a small town in eastern Washington State.

Where are you from? 

Of course, the correct answer at the moment would be that I am from Rayne Township in Indiana County, Pennsylvania.  That is the answer that is being fished for when I am at conferences. But the question itself stirs up emotions in me these days that surprise me.  Because I really don’t know anymore where am I am from; let me put it this way. If you ask me where home is…I would not know what to answer. Is it Clarkston Washington? Is it La Verne or Lytle Creek or Riverside, California? Is it Uniontown or Rayne Township in Pennsylvania? Honestly, I have no idea anymore, and it bothers me.  

We all have a yearning for home.  And it is a tough proposition when you don’t know where home is.

The short passage above is about a concept that rises up frequently in the Bible. It is about home.  I suppose it  is both metaphor and reality.  The home (whatever or wherever it is) we have on this earth is ultimately temporary.  But God has a permanent home for us, “a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens.”

Jesus put it like this: “In my Father's house are many rooms. If it were not so, would I have told you that I go to prepare a place for you?” (visit John 14:2)  Metaphor? No, far more than that. It’s more likely a literal reality that he wanted his disciples then, and you and I now, to trust in.  There is a place waiting for those who trust in Jesus, it is ultimately our home.

Yes, pastors tend to be a bit transient; but the reality is that we all are just sort of traveling through this thing called life.  And God wants us to consider where our real home is.  It’s not so much about where we are from after all. It’s all about where we are going.

‘Where are you from’ simply becomes, ‘where are you going?’

And that is what is important.

P.S.

Susie and I have been so grateful for the warm ‘home’ receptions we have received at whatever congregation I have served; we feel especially blessed by the Presbyterian Church of Marion Center, PA.  It makes this transient existence far more bearable.  I may not know where I am from, but I am very grateful for where I am.