“Where is home?” When people ask me that question, I can certainly give them my present address. But sometimes, it seems they mean more than that. Their actual question is harder to answer. I was born in Amarillo, raised in Alaska, Florida, Missouri, Illinois, Germany, Maryland, Germany again and Montana. I’ve lived in Texas for forty years and Houston for twenty-three. What place do you call home?
Abraham sojourned in this world with no place to call home. After leaving everything to follow God, he lived as a nomad and stopped along the way in places like Bethel and Egypt and Hebron. He really didn’t have his own place until his wife died. Then he bought land near the Oaks of Mamre in Hebron. The negotiation for the land sounds like negotiations you might have if you bargained for something at a market in Israel today. Abraham needed a place to bury Sarah. So he wasn’t trying to make a deal.
I have been to family cemeteries in Missouri and Tennessee. I even walked the land where my seven great grandfather Thomas lived in 1735. If he was buried there, the cemetery has been forgotten long ago. My dad and my brother take good care of the old Shiloh cemetery in Missouri. The only land our family owns there now is those plots where great and great great grandparents are buried.
Where is home? I only ask because it seems like we need a place in this world. If we look back at the generations, we are more nomadic than we might have thought. The old spiritual had it right, “This world is not my home. I’m just passin’ through.” Chesterton said, “Sometimes I feel homesick at home.” Lewis said if we find in ourselves longings which can not be met in this world, we must have been made for another world. Jesus said, “My Father’s house has many rooms. I go to prepare a place for you.” I love this world, this city and my house. But someday I’ll go home. You too?
