“And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and will take you to myself, that where I am you may be also” 

John 14:3 

As I start this entry, my mind swirls about how to start and how to focus on the topic. I want to talk about home, but there is also this urge to write about the chaos of this world. And yet, deep in my soul, I hear a small voice saying “Write about Me.” I so long that every post I write on this journal is all about Him, God Almighty, not myself, not my thoughts, but all about Him. Here we go!

I sit in my loft during my summer break from teaching. It certainly was a year in teaching, in so so many ways, a very difficult year. For the most part I had wonderful students, but the days were difficult and the toll was heavy this past year. I’m not a huge traveler, so there’s a lot of time at home. One thing I love about summer is being able to abide in my sanctuary, my home. 

This summer my sanctuary is new to me. This past year, the Lord led my parents and I to each sell our homes and purchase a home together. It was a harrowing move where the Lord challenged us in some incredible ways, asking us time and time again, “Do you trust Me?” Oh those days were difficult and the challenges mighty, even the possibility of going from two homes to no homes. The nights were short as our minds swirled with various possibilities in this process, but again and again and again, the Lord asked, “Do you trust Me?”

For me home is a sanctuary, a little place (now a little bigger place) that’s mine, a place of comfort and security. When my parents and I started the adventure, we knew this home was going to be temporary, either they would go to be with the Lord, or I would go to be with the Lord. Of course, eventually we will all stand before the Lord. The beauty of it all though, was that we would spend these days togethers, being available for the needs that arise. 

But as I think about sanctuary, there is nothing about my old home, or this new home, that provides anything of permanence. It’s all temporary! Yes, we can spend a long time in a home. My parents had 42 years in their old home, I had 15 years in mine, and we know we have about 15-20 years in this new home. 

Home is such a permanent word in this world, and yet the reality of it truly is that it is a transitory word. We think it’s permanent and stable. We think home will always be home, that it won’t change that it will always be ours, our sanctuary. I remember standing in my old room at my parents’ house the day before the move. I looked back at the 24 years I lived in that room, the 42 years my parents lived in their house, and while always home, it was always changing.

While we call our new home “home”, we know that someday the Lord will call us to truly move HOME, to His presence in Heaven, into the sanctuary itself, the throne room of God, the dwelling place of God Himself. Truly, that is HOME!