I go to prepare a place for you to rest. John 14:2 (TPT)

Where the Heart Is – The Home Series – Part 4

Go to  PART 1  |  PART 2  |  PART 3  |  PART 4  |  PART 5  |  PART 6  |  PART 7

It is believed that nearly two thousand years ago, Pliny the Elder said, “Home is where the heart is.” He was a Naval and Army commander of the early Roman Empire. Spending much of his life on expeditions, missions and traveling in “the field,” perhaps he knew a thing or two about longing for home, and finding out where ‘home' really was.

This quote can also be translated to say, “Family is where the heart is.”

But sometimes family is the LAST place we want to call home.

Not long ago, I drove four hours to see my Grandfather, who has since died of emphysema. I hadn’t seen him (we call him ‘Pa’) for about ten years. And he had never met my children. Things have happened in my family that have torn us apart. It's messy and complicated, uncomfortable and upsetting.

“Family/home is where the heart is.” Could there be a more loaded quote?

These words conjure up warm fuzzy feelings of tender longings for the place where we belong. But just as our hearts carry ALL that is US, so too, do our homes and families (wherever and whoever they may be). They are not exclusive, but rather inclusive of all the good, the bad, the ugly and beautiful parts of life.

Home is where you laugh and cry; make stuff and break stuff; wash dirty clothes and put clean ones away; take off your smelly shoes and kick them under the bed; Where you eat great meals and cook some bad ones; where you lie awake at night worrying, or sleep soundly, dreaming; where you yell at your kids, and then hug them to sleep; it's where you fight with your partner, and share intimate moments. Our homes are battlegrounds and dream factories and peaceful havens and correction facilities and everything in between. It's the collective space of the entirety of life. A place where you can be yourself (unchallenged and challenged) in any and every season. The good and the bad alike.

Home isn’t the house you’re paying off or the place where you eat, sleep and live. Home is where you keep on returning to at the end of a big day, it's the place where you wake and prepare your heart for what is to come; it’s the place where you can be you – no masks, no pretending. It absolutely can be a structure, room, a house. But it's also your thoughts, your memories and your dreams. Your people, too. They can be your home just as much as a building. Maybe it can be said that home is the place that occupies your heart, and the place heart continually returns to.

It doesn’t mean its clean and tidy, designer styled and expensively furnished. To be real, home is a place where whether you are these things or not, it doesn’t matter.

When I think of my Pa, pain blooms in my heart, for many different reasons. But that doesn’t make him any less family, any less home. That’s something that the dysfunction I’ve experienced these last few years, is teaching me. My heart keeps returning to thoughts of him. There’s room for that in my house.

Jesus said, “My Father’s house has many dwelling places. If it were otherwise, I would tell you plainly, because I go to prepare a place for you to rest. And when everything is ready, I will come back and take you into me so that you will be where I am. And you already know the way to the place where I’m going.”

Perhaps instead of speaking of heaven, Jesus was referencing the here and now, heaven on earth, kingdom come and kingdom coming. Perhaps the place he prepares is the foundation of our lives, the walls, floors, rooms and contents. Maybe he takes us to live within ourselves – a place we rarely dare venture. Not the self that needs to impress and perform; not the false-self built from a place of seeking approval and belonging. He deconstructs our lives to reconstruct our hearts. And it's a life long experience: tearing down walls, fears, offences, unforgiveness, ideas and more, and rebuilding hope and faith and love. A place where everything in our lives is included, redeemed and restored. Resurrected into our original design.

In this case, indeed, home is where the heart is.

Over to you. What's home like for you? Leave us a comment below.

Go to Part 5 – Always Home »

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