home

Home. Sometimes just saying that word brings warmth to my innermost being. Thinking of home can soothe my nerves and bring a reminder of peace to my mind. I have the opportunity to go back to Wisconsin this weekend to join my family for some birthday celebrations. I'm going to see my mom and my dad. I'll get to spend time with my brothers and sisters. I'll be with my grandparents, aunts, uncles, and maybe some cousins. I'M GOING TO PLAY WITH MY NIECES! (I'm excited about that, if you couldn't tell.) Home.

Though I won't get to go there on this trip, I do think of how whenever I return to Faith Chapel in Green Bay I am returning home. I know that when I walk through the doors I will be greeted by friends who have become family to me. I love them and I know that they love me. I have cried with them. I have sweat with them. And you better believe that I would bleed with them, if called to do so. This is true for my family by spiritual birth just as it is with my family by natural birth. I am a blessed man.

I couldn't be more excited about the days that sit before me. I'm going home. Most importantly, I am going home to be with my family whom I love. Home without family would just be another house. It would be a residence. But a home is far more than a building. I don't go home just to experience nostalgic feelings of things I've done and people I've been with. I can go to my alma mater for that. I can look through scrapbooks and photo albums and drawers of keepsakes (a.k.a. junk) for nostalgia. Home is about family and the experience of love NOW. We don't long to go home because of history. We long for home because we know that when we are there we will experience anew the love of family and friends. Some people haven't ever experienced home within the houses they were raised in or with the people they have spent their time with. They yearn for home and don't know where to find it. Bono of U2 described these feelings while singing, "I still haven't found what I'm looking for..."

People of God, please open your eyes. As the word says, he who has ears, let him hear. The people of this world are trying to find their way home. They are seeking after a home that they've never seen nor experienced. They don't know where to find it and don't know what it looks like. These people are trying to find "it" in relationships, sex, houses, cars, money, drugs, dogs, success, entertainment, politics, alcohol, violence, religion, athletics, children, power, travel, organizations, nature, and so on and so on and so on... We've all heard people say that they don't know what they're looking for, but they'll know it when they find it. We laugh and dismiss this notion, but I believe it is absolutely true.

We know what home is. We spend our lives searching for our way there. People of God, we are called to be the family that some have never had. We are called to care for the widowed, poor, and orphaned. We have been set apart and commissioned to carry the message that all people can find home at the foot of the cross. Jesus is the Way, the Truth, and the Life. Jesus is home. He is our brother looking out the window and waiting for us to come through the front door. God is the Father who is out in the lawn who stops his work to envelop us in his capable and welcoming arms. We are home... family is home... God is home... heaven is our home.

I yearn to be with my family. I hope to be with my church family. I long and thirst and desire to be with my Heavenly Family. This is who I am and how I was made. This is who you are too. I want to have the heart of my Heavenly Father. He expressed the comfort of home as he said, "Come to me all you who are weary and heavy-laden and I will give you rest." This is the heart I want to pour out of me because there are lonely people with no home who need to be shown the way. What about you? Do you know where home is?