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Home


Trying to describe what home means isn’t easy. The Merriam Webster dictionary says home is a noun, verb, adverb and adjective and gives 20 definitions. Googling “quotes about home” gives thousands of quotes. Here a few:

“Home is the nicest word there is.” — Laura Ingalls Wilder

“For the two of us, home isn’t a place. It is a person. And we are finally home.” — Stephanie Perkins, Anna and the French Kiss

Be grateful for the home you have, knowing that at this moment, all you have is all you need.” — Sarah Ban Breathnach

“Home is the place where, when you have to go there, they have to take you in.” — Robert Frost, “The Death of the Hired Man”

“Home is people. Not a place. If you go back there after the people are gone, then all you can see is what is not there anymore.” — Robin Hobb, Fool’s Fate

Happiness is a small house, with a big kitchen.” — Alfred Hitchcock

“Home is where the Wi-Fi connects automatically.” — Unknown

“Home sweet home. This is the place to find happiness. If one doesn’t find it here, one doesn’t find it anywhere.” — M. K. Soni

“A home should be a stockade, a refuge from the flaming arrows of anxiety, tension and worry.” — Wilfred Peterson

“A man travels the world over in search of what he needs and returns home to find it.” — George Augustus Moore, The Brook Kerith

As you can see, home is a place, person, feeling-all kinds of things. Many quotes are philosophical in nature. Others depict home as a place where one finds love, comfort, and peace. I know plenty of people would strongly disagree with those caricatures and see home as a place of abuse, fear, and pain. Which brings me to my dilemma—what does home mean to me?

I was raised in a strong conservative Christian home. Home was often talked about as being Heaven or Paradise-the place where we are with God. The world is not home. People in this Christian tradition often refer to death as going home. It is a comforting idea for both the dying and the living.
Four years ago, I had a very intense spiritual experience. I went through a couple of weeks feeling strangely troubled and discontent. It didn’t make sense. My life was going pretty well. During that time, I attending a fellowship of women physicians who also were Christians. It was a great experience and I felt so close to God yet the heaviness became more intense. I sat in my car unable to leave and I started praying and waiting for God to tell me what he wanted. Silence. I have no idea where the words came from but I finally asked Him if I was going home soon. I was suddenly filled with excitement and joy as intense as the disturbance had been. I knew God’s answer- YES! I started looking at every day where breathing was hard as the possible day I would go home. I no longer do that, but I am confused. Did I misunderstand? Does “soon” mean something different to God? He is eternal after all and four years is a speck of time compared to forever. I shared this experience with my discipleship band a few months ago voicing my confusion. One of the members challenged me, saying that maybe home has another meaning.

Earlier the year of that women’s fellowship I attended a conference called “New Room”. It was a place of repentance, submission, worship, and healing. The friend that came with me had been struggling for ten years with anger towards a surgeon who botched a surgery and refused to admit or treat it. She was left with chronic pain and intestinal issues yet desired to be able to forgive the man who hurt her. She returned home free of the anger and full of forgiveness. I returned home changed. Since that time, I have known God in a more profound and intimate way, hungry to be with him and more in tune with his Spirit. At New Room, that is called awakening.

I have been wondering if what happened at New Room and God’s revelation are somehow connected. Is this new relationship with God being home? The answer is yes but it is more than that. I recently listened to a talk by Tim Mackie, founder of the Bible Project. He related the story of how his spiritual life has been awakened. He talked about Paradise (aka Heaven and the Garden of Eden). He asked two questions: when is Paradise and where is Paradise. He went through scripture verses about Paradise for the answers and what he found is that Paradise is a different dimension that we can’t see. That dimension is a mind and heart that created all things and holds up all things. Paradise is a person, a Perpetual Presence and Eternal Now. His name is Jesus. And HE is my home. Someday, I will enter that other dimension but, in the meantime, Paradise Home is in me and I am in Him.