Where is home?

Where is home?

In the last month I have caught six international flights, crossed time zones seven times, slept in eight different beds and been in four different countries.  Meanwhile my family is scattered across three different parts of Australia and in Vietnam. As I write I am checked in to fly again to a foreign land today. Late next week I fly to yet a different country and have five beds in eight days.

So, where is home? Is it my official residential address, at which I will spend just seven nights out of 49? Or Singapore where I will spend 10 put of the 49? Or the place where my wife is?

From past reflections I have concluded that:

·       Home is every place where I have lived.

·       Home is where I sleep tonight.

·       Home is my official address.

·       Home is where loved ones are.

These multiple senses of home enable me to make sense of my “where” which contributes to my sense of “who”. Both are important for a sense of groundedness.

That earthly sense of home matters because this life matters.

I also have an eternal sense of home that contributes to my where and who. My eternally real home is with God through his grace in Christ. That has an earthly aspect, for one can be “home” with him here. And it has eternal aspect, for I anticipate the dwelling of many rooms where there is one with my nameplate etched for eternity.

Where is home? It is wherever I am with my God.

An ordinary Sunday

An ordinary Sunday

It was a smallish town in the midst of an unusually hot summer, and it was that “dead” space between Christmas and New year. That nation was in its usual summer sleep and gave little interest even to the traditional; MCG cricket test (“great time to invade” is often said).

However, it was a Sunday.

30-40 people gathered in a local church. They were mostly older, and many knew each other over many years. There was no musician, so the singing accompaniment was YouTube. An elder in his 70s was preaching. His offering was faithful to the text and warm in his application – a ‘straight bat’ kind of sermon without flair or fancy tricks. The kids talk (two kids present) was apt to the season and the pastoral prayer had a global focus.

All in it was the kind of gathering hardly worth writing about … a bit like an ordinary meal that creates no memories and generates no lingering ‘wow’.

However, it was a gathering of the bride of Christ. And he was present through his Spirit in the ordinariness of familiar routines. We left, reminded of higher things and called to live in their light as a new year loomed. It was a bit like an ordinary meal that nourishes its diners for the coming days.

My point? The gatherings of God’s people are often like this – embarrassingly ordinary. Our yearning to have ears tickled and senses stimulated by dazzling gatherings of large numbers may blind us to the reassure that is before our eyes. Christ may be as much present and working in the ordinariness of the forgettable Sunday as in the memorable event that resembles Pentecost.