Read: Acts 17:26-28

The idea of home resonates deep within all of us. Home is that place where we feel free and loved and at peace. At home, we have nothing to prove and nothing to protect because we know we are fully loved and lovable. It is at home that we experience being safe, seen, soothed, and secure.

We long for home and yet we are often unsure how to “be at home” or how to get home.

Chuck DeGroat uses the metaphor of home to describe a “place where you can relax, where you can be completely yourself, where the cares of the day seem to melt away.” (Healing What’s Within) In a word, it is the experience of being “found.” DeGroat contrasts this with fight, flight, or freeze that would suggest we are not finding ourselves at home.

Part of the challenge is that we have all experienced versions of home that are less than an experience of being safe, seen, soothed, and secure, so our hearts move into the world and life trying to find home out there somewhere or perhaps we seek to protect our hearts so we don’t feel the pain of not feeling at home.

The illusion we often inherit is that God (and experiencing Him as home) is “out there” somewhere as well. In Acts 17:26-28, the Apostle Paul made the observation that “God is not far away.”

And he made from one man every nation of mankind to live on all the face of the earth, having determined allotted periods and the boundaries of their dwelling place, that they should seek God, and perhaps feel their way toward him and find him. Yet he is actually not far from each one of us, for “‘In him we live and move and have our being’; as even some of your own poets have said, “‘For we are indeed his offspring.’ 

This is quite astounding. Our core invitation in life is to come home … to be at home with God. Thomas Keating described it this way: “What is home? It’s to live in God’s house all the days of our lives. And that house is this participation in the divine life … a communion, or a unity, that is incomparable, that is oneness, that’s inseparable. If we really trust God, we don’t have a care in the world.”

The house of the Lord is the thematic center of the Psalms of Ascent (122:1, 9; 132:5, 7, 13; 134:1), and His house is His presence. Our longing as well as the destination of the journey is living in God’s presence. While there is a deep conceptual simplicity in this reality, the journey is complex and traverses through terrain that strips us and forms us to dwell in the love, joy, and peace that is His presence. 

German pastor and theologian Meister Eckhart wrote: “God is at home. It is we who have gone out for a walk.” So, perhaps we could say that our task on the spiritual journey is to walk home. To be at home with the Lord. This is what Jesus is inviting in John 15:4 in the words: “Abide in me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit by itself, unless it abides in the vine, neither can you, unless you abide in me.” Eugene Peterson translates Jesus’ words this way: “Live in me. Make your home in me just as I do in you.”

How does that work? How do we walk home? Certainly, there is mystery to how we progress on this journey but there are some things that can guide us. Another way to say it: there are not formulas but there is discernment. 

Discernment begins with acknowledging where you as well as the ways that you have walked away from your home, which is God Himself. This brings us to the Scriptural concept of repentance which is a turning. Repentance is a gracious invitation from God to turn back. So …

• Acknowledge places where you have looked for home in other than God
• Turn your heart back toward God; tell Him you believe that He is home; trust it
• Pray and ask God for strength on this journey of walking home 

Reflection questions: As we begin this journey, what stirs in you as you consider walking home? Where are you right now on that journey? What do you desire?

Prayer: Lord, I acknowledge that I have been out for a walk and that You are home. Give me eyes to see You as home and the strength to turn back again and again. Amen.