Home: Our Destination
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When Lee Marvin sang in his quiet gravelly voice “I Was Born Under a Wandering Star,” he was thinking of home, “a sight that didn't look better looking back,” and a home that “is made for coming from, for dreams of going to.” Being born under a wandering star, always looking for a home and hoping never to find it, but to sadly keep the wheels rolling through mud and dust, heat and snow, aptly describes life without a home—life under a wandering star.
I often think of Marvin singing that song in the 1969 color movie version of the Broadway play, Paint Your Wagon. In its echoes I contemplate my own wanderings under an infinite sky in a restless world brushed with dark colors of sadness and restlessness—a world that seems homeless, places that don’t feel like home. Why does finding our home seem to be a never-ending pursuit?
Home’s warm embrace beckons us with comfort and safety.
For many home is the most enduring and peaceful place of refuge and rest we experience in this life. The most blessed know the comfort, safety, and security of home whether when it is early in the morning before the world awakens around us or on a warm evening when tiredness overcomes and we begin to feel the beckoning of sleep.
Home is where we have the best rest, the safest sense of security. Home is our destination. It’s where we want to be when everything else is finished and behind us and all that lays ahead is a weary journey to its warm embrace like a peaceful womb with perfect repose.
Home can be filled with frustrations and tears.
Yet home in this life is not always so perfect. Too small. Too old. Leaky to water and wind. Hot in the summer, cold in the winter. Fixing up our homes can mean the frustrations and patience-testing of a remodel—it never goes how we hoped. Maintaining them means there is always something to do—repairs, expenses, time. Yet it’s not just the material problems.
Home brings back memories of anger and strife, abuse and abandonment. It’s where Dad could no longer live at the end of his life when he needed more care for his failing body. My brother died in his home. It’s where my friend cared for her suffering husband and years later suddenly lost her young grandson. Its where I took the phone call and told my wife of the unexpected death of her younger brother. Homes are often filled with too much tragedy and too many tears. It’s times like these when home feels like gray ashes and dry smoke, nothing left but sad memories carried away in silence.
Home is our destination.
Yet, in spite of all the painful shifts of life, for many of us home still remains our favorite refuge. We decorate and furnish our homes, whether modest or grand, to reflect our sense of beauty, giving pleasure to our creative urges and smiles to those who enter. We share intimate meals with family and friends, and at large holiday gatherings we quietly reflect on how much has changed as we age. We hug and cry and laugh and sing. Home brings to mind the joys of this life, taking us back to all the happiness that surrounds and embraces us. And home heals.
In spite of our brokenness, home brings us together in love. Our homes join us shoulder-to-shoulder with each other and remind us of what our eternal home must be like. I think that’s why we love going home so much, for home is a God-given glimpse of heaven. Heaven is rest and refuge from our wandering and wacky lives—the place we were made for and the place where our savior Christ Jesus has ascended to prepare a room for us to bring us home. Home is our place for going to.
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