The older I get, the more I appreciate “Home!” After a busy shopping day, driving through cold and snow, or on icy roads, it is a blessed relief to open the door to Home. It’s wonderful to go on a journey, to visit family and friends, to see new places, and experience exciting adventures. But,
‘Mid pleasures and palaces though we may roam,
Be it ever so humble, there’s no place like home;
A charm from the sky seems to hallow us there,
Which, seek through the world, is ne’er met with elsewhere.
Home, home, sweet, sweet home!
There’s no place like home, oh, there’s no place like home!
“Home, Sweet Home” is a song that has remained well-known for over 150 years. It is sung almost like a hymn but began life as a secular song. It’s a song about the value of a good home – a story about someone leaving home, wandering around, falling on hard times, and then returning home to a welcome from loving parents. The song was hugely popular in the nineteenth century. I understand that, in more recent years, the Japanese adopted it as a wedding song for their western-style weddings.
I have seen the title phrase, “Home Sweet Home” embroidered in pictures, and it has been included in both operas and films.
Home is defined as a house, apartment, or other dwelling serving as the abode of a person, family, or household; a residence; a peaceful or restful place; refuge, or haven. But a home is more than a house and the residence where one dwells. The word embraces the personal ties that hold one to a house or town or region or country. Home is also defined as the place in which something originates.
I can only imagine how the prodigal son felt when, after his worldly adventures, failures and shame, he arrived home, and into his father’s loving embrace.
The Apostle Paul wrote to the Corinthian Church that “to us there is but one God, the Father, (out)of whom are all things, and we in(to) Him…” The writer of Ecclesiastes speaks of the time when we go to our “long home” and “….. the spirit returns unto God Who gave it.” We sing of our Heavenly Home, when we return to that Spirit realm from which we came. (1 Cor. 8:6; Eccl. 12:5-7)
In the meantime, the Apostle John gives great emphasis to the truth that there is now a mutual dwelling together between the Father and His children who confess that Jesus is the Son of God, who obey His words, and who live in love. “And this is His commandment, That we should believe on the name of His Son, Jesus Christ, and love one another as He gave us commandment. And he that keeps His commandments DWELLS IN HIM, and He in him. And hereby we know that He abides in us by the Spirit which He has given us….. No man has seen God at any time. If we love one another, God dwells in us, and His love is perfected in us. Hereby we know that WE DWELL IN HIM, and He in us, because He has given us of His Spirit…..Whoever shall confess that Jesus is the Son of God, God dwells in him, and HE IN GOD. And we have known and believed the love that God has to us. God is love, and he that dwells in love DWELLS IN GOD, and God in him.” (1 John 3:23-24; 4:12-16)
As we pointed out in our last letter, “…..through Him (Jesus) we have access by one Spirit unto the Father. Now therefore you are no more strangers and foreigners, but fellow citizens with the saints, and of the household of God.” (Eph. 2:18,19) The heavy veil separating us from the Presence of God was torn open when Jesus was crucified, symbolizing the reality that His blood, shed for the forgiveness of our sins, now gives us access into the Holy Presence of our Father God.
An unknown author has expressed in poetry the highest and most blest meaning of Home - God Himself!
My Home is God Himself; Christ brought me there.
I laid me down within His mighty arms;
He took me up, and safe from all alarms
He bore me “where no foot but His has trod,”
Within the holiest at Home with God,
And bade me dwell in Him, rejoicing there.
O Holy Place! O Home divinely fair!
And we, God’s little ones, abiding there.
My Home is God Himself; it was not so!
A long, long road I traveled night and day,
And sought to find within myself some way,
Aught I could do, or feel to bring me near;
Self effort failed, and I was filled with fear,
And then I found Christ was the only way,
That I must come to Him and in Him stay,
And God had told me so.
And now “my Home is God,” and sheltered there,
God meets the trials of my earthly life,
God compasses me round from storm and strife,
God takes the burden of my daily care.
O Wondrous Place! O Home divinely fair!
And I, God’s little one, safe hidden there.
Lord, as I dwell in Thee and Thou in me,
So make me dead to everything but Thee;
That as I rest within my Home most fair,
My soul may evermore and only see
My God in everything and everywhere;
“My Home is God!”
“May God, the giver of HOPE, fill you with continual joy and peace because you trust in Him-so that you may have abundant HOPE through the power of the Holy Spirit.”
Romans 15:13 (Weymouth)
And may you find your HOME IN GOD.
In Agape, Eulene
