On Coming Home...Part One

When you hear the word home what comes to mind? For many the word home means family, refuge, love, comfort, peace.  We often think of home in reference to our childhood homes…the place where we grew up and the experiences we had there. We saw our parents as larger than life figures that knew everything and protected us from the boogie man and that mean kid in first grade. 

 Home was the only place we were truly safe. 

Family Christmas 2012

As we enter adulthood we desire to leave home in order to spread our wings …to learn to fly on our own.  We want to establish our identity, our purpose, our community. Yet, when the winds of freedom begin to batter at our fragile newly formed wings our first instinct is often to fly home. In the beginning it may work… our home is not much changed from what we remembered.  We can go home and sink into the safety of the nest.  However, as we get older and change so does our home. The house may have been sold, our rooms turned into something else, or those precious loved ones may have passed on.  We find that the home we long for has changed and we can’t get back to that place. There’s some truth in the adage once you leave home you can never truly go back. But just because we can’t get back home doesn’t mean the desire or the longing for home goes away. It sits there in the midst of our hearts groaning….

You see the thing is that this groan has been there all along. It was there from our beginning. When we cried our first breath the groan was already present we just didn’t realize it yet. The groan has been present since Adam and Eve turned around and saw the angels standing guard at the entrance of Eden.  What they knew of home was gone and in its place was a shadow of what used to be and in their heart there was now a groan.