No Place Like Home

Now listen, daughter, don’t miss a word: forget your country, put your home behind you. Be here—the king is wild for you. Since he’s your Lord, adore him.” — Psalm 45:10-11

Recently I said goodbye to six friends who came for a week-long visit—two of them being some of my closest and most cherished friends. To say it was bittersweet is putting it mildly.

HOME. It is a word filled with deep emotion, smells, sounds, and fraught with meaning. Lately I have come to realize something: I can no longer define a single place on this spinning planet 3rd from the sun as “home.” This is both unsettling and exciting all at the same time. You see, until I stepped out in faith and obedience I didn’t fully understand a truth of Scripture. We, the Body of Christ, were never meant to be comfortable here… Earth was never supposed to feel like home. Oh, but it can be so comfortable! Filled with yummy foods, beautiful scenery, amazing experiences and people who we hold most dear—but all these things are to point us towards our real home, our forever home in the presence of our beloved Savior, even Jesus!

As a missionary, I live in this tension where southern California, the only home I knew for 40 years of my life, is no longer home for me. And the natural thought would be, Well then, surely Africa is now your home. Ah, but this also isn’t home. For me and for many other missionaries, home lies somewhere in between. So no matter where I find myself there is a sense of not fully belonging, of never feeling completely “at home.” But this difficulty, this tension, this complex life circumstance is a treasure! The truth for me now, and I pray it will ever be true until I’m face to face with Jesus, is that I’ll always be longing for home. Longing for the place where I will fully know, even as I am fully known.