home is not here.

If you're just joining us this week, this is my last installment of a series about home. I've been asking and trying to answer questions like, what is home? What does it mean? How do we define it? Is home a person? A place? A feeling or a memory? And ultimately, where is my home? Is my home even here?

As I was driving back from Milwaukee this afternoon and thinking about this post, I couldn't help but feel so full of hope. This whole week as I've been thinking through home, I keep coming back to the truth that ultimately, our home is not here. 

I am drawn back to something I heard this summer at Castaway. After our final Saturday of work, the summer staff, along with all the other camp staff, met in the Club Room. I remember the Camp Director saying something to the effect of ... this work we've done, the community we've created, the home that we've build the past three weeks, it makes me yearn for my heavenly home. 

For the past few months, that phrase has stuck with me - to yearn for my heavenly home. As I started thinking about home and what it means to me and how I wanted to present it to you, the most important thing for me to say is that our home is not here. This is what gives me so much hope. Our home, our ultimate peaceful place of comfort, is home with our Heavenly Father. Seeing as I'm pressed for time right now (a shower is calling me name ... ), I thought I'd share a few songs with you that have connected me back to the truth that my home is not on this Earth. Our home, the place where we belong, is in Heaven. Please listen.

Maybe the reason that I've been feeling so displaced, so transitional, and so unsure of my true home .. is because my home is not here. I think back to the article I read on Relevant and to the idea that we're wandering through this Earth from home to home until we make it to Heaven. Maybe the reason we have an ache in our hearts to know where we belong and who we belong to, is because we belong in a different world. Maybe I'm not ever going to feel at home here, because home is not here. We belong in Heaven. We were created to be with God. That's where we belong. That's home.

"If I find myself in a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probably explanations is that I was made for another world." - C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity 








Do I ever express how truly grateful I am that you read my posts? Thank you for reading. It means more than you know. My earnest hope is that this week has challenged you, if even for a moment, to think about your home. What is home to you? Where is your home? Who is your home? And ultimately, is your home here? I pray that, in some small way, this week and this blog have an impact on your heart. And I don't want to take any of the credit for that - my words and my heart are part of a much bigger story, and I'm not the author. So, thank you for reading. Back tomorrow with marvelous musical selections for Christmas. - Erin