Where is home?

This is a difficult question to answer once you physically leave home. Home, I think, is generally thought of as the place where you grew up, where your roots are. Again, what happens when you create roots somewhere else? Is the question really that simple? After leaving my own home and serving as a missionary for nearly three years in the Dominican Republic, with only short stents in other places, I've been prompted to think about this more. Besides the fact that I myself started feeling that the D.R. was another home, and lived among people who felt like family, I have now met and known people that have spent a grand majority of their lives in countries that are not their "own". Many that I have met have spent decades in a country they did not grow up in, and some are being raised in that country, away from the place where everyone looks like them and where their extended family lives. I remember when I first started getting to know a fellow missionary who had spent a decade in the D.R. She expressed the confusion it often brought to her and her family, especially in times of traveling back and forth. I met her very shortly after she had returned from living in the States for a year for her family's missionary furlough. I loved what she said. It went something like this, "After a while you get sort of confused about where you belong and where your real home is, but I feel like I have a stronger sense that Heaven is my real home, and is where I really belong." As I have now moved back to my original home in Raleigh and certainly feel at home, close to a place and people that are very familiar, I still feel different, marked by another place and people who became my home for a short time.

Because of my fellow missionary's impacting words, I have been thinking about God's promises of a place that will be new to us, but that is eternal and has been prepared for us. In the book of Revelation, John writes, "And I saw a new heaven and a new earth: for the first heaven and the first earth were passed away; and there was no more sea" (Revelation 21:1). Time and time again, God speaks about the temporariness of life of this earth, and about the place that awaits us. Jesus says, "In My Father's house are many dwelling places; if it were not so, I would have told you; for I go to prepare a place for you" (John 14:2). And Paul writes to the Corinthians an incredibly powerful statement. He says, "For we know that if the earthly tent we live in is destroyed, we have a building from God, an eternal house in heaven, not built by human hands. Meanwhile we groan, longing to be clothed instead with our heavenly dwelling, because when we are clothed, we will not be found naked" (2 Corinthians 5:1-3). 

It is unmistakable that there is a heaven that awaits us, and that Christ will make all things new when He returns. There is no other real, lasting comfort and hope in this life. His love is bigger than any and every circumstance, and His truth is the only truth that stands forever. As things change in my own life, and I am facing a brand new chapter, I am beyond comforted by my God, who never changes and who will continue to be faithful. And no matter where we go, He is with us; and no matter what new homes we make, it can not compare with the eternal home that awaits us. Thanks, God, because "if I rise on the wings of the dawn, if I settle on the far side of the sea, even there your hand will guide me, your right hand will hold me fast" (Psalm 139:9-10).