Have you ever been homesick? What came to mind when
you read that?
Did you think of the home you grew up in? Are you
thinking about how you’d rather be at home now than
at work? Do you even have something to be homesick
for or about? We all come from some kind of home,
even a bad one, which always plants the foundational
seed of a possible and ideal paradise.
And it points forward, urging us toward the
realization that this taste of a union might
actually be true. [1]
We all want a home. Not a house, but a home. That
feeling of wanting to be home is homesickness.
The word homesick usually connotes something sad or
nostalgic, an emptiness that looks either backward
or forward for satisfaction. When you're homesick,
you might miss familiar things like your family,
friends, pets, house, or neighborhood. You can miss
something as simple as your bed or the tree outside
your window.
Isn’t this a major theme in many of our favorite
stories? Think of Dorothy in the Wizard of OZ.
Or Sassy, Shadow, and Chance in Homeward Bound. Or
Jesus’ parable about the prodigal son.
Or the sacred story that is our faith.
Think about it: God’s story begins with the original
blessing in Genesis 1 and ends the same way in
Revelation 22. The stories between those bookends
are ones about home in one way or another—a people
striving to return home to God.
We all have this inner restlessness that urges us on
to the risks and promises of home. Often, though, we
overlook this restlessness or try our best to avoid
it. It is too difficult or takes too much work to
create a home, especially when it is a home within.
What I am referring to is what many have deemed as a
God-sized hole in all of us, waiting to be filled.
This hole creates a dissatisfaction that only God’s
grace and love can satisfy. Like the son in the
prodigal story, we try to fill this restlessness
with money, adventures, and other numbing
addictions, diversionary tactics, or detrimental
distractions. Or to put it another way: we do
everything we can to stay away from home.
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I encourage you to go home, to return to
yourself, your true selves, the part of you that is
affirmed and loved by God.
On this journey home, which is very much so a spiral
and not a straight line, know you aren’t alone. We
are all created with an inner drive and necessity
that sends all of us looking for our True Selves.
This is what it means to work out our salvation.
Subsequently this is what it means to be home—when
we discover that union we share with God.
Perhaps that feeling you can’t shake of being
homesick is less so about a physical place and more
so about being attentive to the you you miss. We can
be homesick in our own skin or we can be at home.
As Thomas Merton puts it, perhaps we have a choice
in the matter:
We can be ourselves or not, as we please. We are at
liberty to be real, or to be unreal. We may be true
or false, the choice is ours. We may wear now one
mask and now another, and never, if we so desire,
appear with our own true face.
[Adam Quine of First Presbyterian Church in
Lincoln] |
