Thoughts: Hannah's Blog

In our childhood days, home meant the place where our parents lived. Didn’t matter whether it was rented or owned, whether it was big or small. It was probably closer to school and the whole neighborhood was full of our friends. Evening times were always play times and weekends, we used to spend the whole day playing on the roads or in one of our friend’s houses. If our mom wanted us, all she had to do, was to stand at the gate and shout our names, we used to come running out of one house or the other.

As long as we were children, all we wanted to do was grow up and move out of the house because we felt our parents were controlling and we longed for that “freedom” wherin we can wake up whenever we want to, eat whatever we want to, also go to sleep whenever we want to. This was our primary motivation behind wanting to move out and be “free”. But once we move to hostels for college education or to work in a different city, the whole meaning of home changes.

Ya maybe we enjoyed the freedom of choosing to do whatever we wanted to, whenever we wanted to. In a sense we were free, but we also had the new burden of “responsibilities”. We have to wake up by ourselves in the morning. (thanks to the alarms and snooze buttons and responsible roommates!) We had to take care of our laundry! Maybe wash once a week, hang them dry, take it back, fold them, keep them in. So many things to do – going to classes/work on time. Work! That too without being told to. At this point, the meaning of home changes. We have a longing for home. Mom’s cooked food – the thing we miss the most. We make plans to travel home during long weekends and we look forward to being pampered by our family’s love and affection.

The day you have to travel back, you feel miserable and feel homesick. This cycle continues, until you get married. (talking from the point of view of a woman here). Your husband’s home becomes your home now, so if he is staying alone, you have to make a home with him. If he is staying with his parents, you make their home as your home. So now your definition of home is different. But for a girl, the longing to go to her mom’s place remains. It was at this point of time in my life, when I was feeling homesick, that the following verse gave me a whole new meaning to the word home.

Lord, through all the generations you have been our home! – Psalms 90:1 NLT

The above is the beginning of a prayer written by Moses, the man of God. When you think about it, Moses was never “home” Few months after his birth, they couldn’t keep him hidden any longer due to the political situation (The Egyptian king had orderd killing of all male babies of Israel) So they kept him in a basket and left him on the Nile. The king’s daughter saw him and took him to her home. Moses grew up in the palace, but deep down he knew he was not an Egyptian so when he was an adult, he took matters into his hands and thought he could support and deliver Israelites but his plan didn’t work out and he had to flee Egypt.

He traveled afar, found a girl, married her and settled there. For forty years he was there, tending sheep. Then came God’s call for him to go and deliver the Israelites. He did as he was told and led the Israelites out of Egypt and they had to travel through the wilderness, in the desert for 40 years. They used to stay in tents and moved whenever God’s presence moved, from place to place. Moses died before entering Canaan, the Promised Land. But he called God as his home. To him, God was his dwelling place, the place of safety, where he found comfort. No matter where he was and where he had to go, He knew he could depend on God’s presence.

This verse challenged me, opened a whole new perspective of my definition of home. My Home is my God! He is my safe place, my comfort, where I belong. Where I can be myself, let my hair down, talk my heart out, where I am heard, understood, acknowledged, accepted, loved unconditionally, …. (add whichever terms  make you feel at home/what means home to you) And he is our home not just here on the earth but also he has made a place for us to dwell with him in Heaven.

My Father’s house has many rooms; if that were not so, would I have told you that I am going there to prepare a place for you? And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come back and take you to be with me that you also may be where I am. – John 14:12,13. NIV

Sometimes, when we see the imperfectness of the world we live in, when we read news resports of some horrible crime, when we get to see so much suffering around us, when we see sickness of our loved ones, when we hear of untimely accidents, all that goes wrong around us, it makes us realize the fallenness of the world we live in and gives us a longing for our eternal home, where there is no sorrow, only joy, no tears, no sickness, no suffering but only enjoying the presence of God. Indeed we are homesick for heaven.

He has planted eternity in the human heart. Ecclesiastes 3:11 NLT