Home

More than anything I am looking for home. I suspect that many of us are engaged in this same search. Different stages of life may render the longing more pronounced. Others fulfill the desire to one degree or another. Yet the search is always there.

As you are no doubt aware, I am not talking about an address. I have been graced by many an address in my time and will most likely reside at several more. The home we seek is state of being. A state of being ok, at peace, and safe. A state of contentment within the moment and of those with whom you share the moment being content with you. This is home.

I first felt this longing in high school. I grew up between two homes and was an active and social youth. I considered making friends and memories the serious business of life. As a result my house became the place where I slept and sometimes ate. And in the midst of this adolescence from time to time I would slow down just enough to feel something. Something I didn’t recognize yet knew I was missing. That something was home.

The longing would return again and again in college as I walked around the grounds late at night, finished a long day, or packed up my things to move to and from campus. Even as I type the emotions of those moments come back to me. They flood my mind and body in an arresting way that holds me fast in the present while making me feel the past.

As a single college graduate weighing the adventures and options before me the search for home was always present. And today, as a married and employed man, I still feel that longing. As I leave my college campus office and walk to my home I am often griped by a feeling that I have not arrived. That Kansas is not it. That the moving van is outside my house and, like Bono, I just haven’t found what I am looking for.

Perhaps none of us really ever arrive. Perhaps we are longing for what only eternity can offer, a perfect presence and love in which we shall forever be at home. I believe and feel that this is true. The thought warms my heart.

Yet, I am also convinced that in the midst of the longing and wandering life gives us glimpses of home. Those glimpses are the moments we hope wont end. Moments seeming to be the crowning points of creation - as beautiful as any mountain, valley, or sunset.

I have felt those moments around a campfire on the Oregon coast. With the kind sounds of my friend’s voices all around, it seemed as if God could step onto that beach, take in the scene and say, “perfect, I wouldn’t change a thing.” That moment was a glimpse of home.

Most recently, I have found another glimpse of home in my wife Beth. In simple exchanges there is profound love and grace in marriage. Yesterday in the midst of a conversation I told her “you are my family.” She smiled in agreement. In that moment I was home. With her I will share many more such moments.

These moments do not end the search. Rather they give us a glimpse of the finish and quickly fade to memories and photographs that, when brought into view, make the longing all the more strong. Perhaps they are all part of a broken prelude to eternity. They are the most real moments of this world and the most certain pictures of the next.

They are reminders of home.