Where's Home?

The other day Anna said “we are travelling from a home that is not our home, but has been our home since August, out to our home that was once our home, but is not our home for much longer. After that, we return again to this home, that is not our home, but will continue to be our home until we discover the place that is to become our home”. 

What's a home then? To answer that properly, you have to set aside thoughts of geography and place, and think more relationally. Who is it that you are at home with? Where does your heart feel most at home? The well worn cliche says that home is where the heart is. Well, if that’s the case then our ‘home’ is probably somewhere south of the Thames! Or, one of any number of places where we have strong memories and where we had developed close relationships. Lisbon, Athens, Coleraine, Rahimyar Khan.

Back to our travelling out to that home in Greece this week. 

Over the next few days, we will be consumed with stuff. 

Clearing out stuff, throwing away stuff, selling and donating stuff, and also packing and shipping stuff. 

And the stuff that we will be packing and shipping will be the things we consider most to constitute our ‘home”. 

Our relational ‘Peter and Anna’ couple-home. 

And deciding what that is will be the hardest thing. 

There will be  lot of minimalising, a lot of decluttering, simplifying, or whatever you want to call it. 

And probably a lot of arguing as well. 

In a sense, we will be packing up our tent.

John, in his gospel (and still with the Christmas story) uses an interesting Greek word to describe what Jesus did when he was born in Bethlehem. It says that he ‘set up his tent’ and lived among us. The word “Εσκηνωσεν”,  comes directly from the word for tent, or temporary dwelling, and is only used in the Bible here in John, and also, interestingly, in the Book of Revelation, where it says that “the One who sits in Heaven will ‘spread his tent’ over them.”  That’s the eternal dimension of where home is, and where our future ‘campsite’ will be. 

For now, let’s find out what the temporal dimension will be for us next. 

Where next, will we pitch our tent?

** John 1:14, Revelation 7:15