Dear Friend,

Reflection by Gregory Floyd, M.A.

The Word as Our Home

Three weeks before our wedding in 1983, we had nowhere to live.  All my searching had yielded nothing.  There were too few apartments and too many renters.  One night while working on wedding details, I said to Maureen, my fiancée: “It’s three weeks until our wedding and we have nowhere to live.  How are you doing with that?”  She looked at me and smiled.  “I’m fine.  Our relationship is my home.” After forty years of marriage, these remain some of the most beautiful words I have ever heard. 

We ultimately found an apartment just a few days before our wedding and it was great to settle in and make it a home after our honeymoon.   As it turns out, God is also interested in homes: “If you make my word your home, you will indeed be my disciples, and you will know the truth, and the truth will make you free.” –John 8:31.

It’s strange to think of a word as a home.  Homes have length, breadth, and height.  They have rooms and furniture, lighting, and decorations.  Not so with words.  Words do not take up space, though they often have a greater impact on us than the place where we lay our heads.  Our lives are shaped by words, words that have built us up and words that have torn us down.   Words have power.  They create and they destroy. 

What is it about words that makes them a home?  Homes provide roots. They provide a space to pause, to rest, to ponder.  In my home I can think about who I am, who I’ve been and who I might yet become.  A home is familiar.  I know my way around it in the dark.  It’s a place of encouragement and inspiration and sometimes, correction.  It is a place where I am loved without having to earn that love. 

This is what God’s word is for us: a place of safety and refuge, of inspiration and encouragement.  It is a place where God speaks to us in a way we could never have imagined, revealing to us, as no one else ever could, our identity as His sons and daughters; objects of his unconditional love:    

I have loved you with an everlasting love; therefore I have continued my faithfulness to you (Jer. 3:31).

My heart recoils within me, my compassion grows warm and tender (Hos. 11:8).

Because you are precious in my eyes, and honored, and I love you…(Isa. 43:4).

I will give you rest (Mt. 11:28).

Take heart, it is I; have no fear (Mt. 14: 27).

Your sins are forgiven (Lk. 7: 48).

Touch me, and see (Lk. 24:39). 

In this season, as we prepare our homes for the celebration of our Lord’s birth, let us prepare our hearts by making our home in His word.  In this sacred season, home to many of the most beautiful verses in Scripture, may we ponder His word, rest in His word, and be changed by His word in order that our hearts and words become a home, a place of true hospitality for the hungry, the thirsty and all the weary travelers who need hope and love and shelter from the cold.      

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Gregory Floyd, M.A. is the Assistant Director of the Center for Diaconal Formation at Immaculate Conception Seminary School of Theology.  Gregory is married to Maureen and they are the parents of nine children.  He is the author of “A Grief Unveiled: One Father’s Journey Through the Death of a Child” and “Unforgettable: How Remembering God’s Presence in Our Past Brings Hope to Our Future.”