Home

Home is something I’ve been thinking about lately. For one, I miss it and the people that make it what it is, especially this time of year. And since being married, I have two families that I sorely miss. For two, we don’t really have one in the literal sense of the word. We haven’t really had a home since the end of July. But by the grace of God, we have had the opportunity to notice and be blessed by the homes of other people who have deeply loved and cared for us. This is a profound blessing I would have never been able to experience otherwise. There’s some serious reflection, praying, and self work to be done when you don’t have a home. You’re never quite comfortable…and yet at times I’ve grown to like that about our lives. I think God has been showing us the uniqueness and faithfulness of His character that longs to give and bless and heal. And I’m grateful. 

I think in the human heart there is always a deeper longing for home. It helps us feel whole. This time of year I’m reminded of the wholeness we have in the hope of a Savior who wasn’t born in a comfortable place. Joseph and the very mother of the Redeemer of the world frantically search for a place for him to be born. During the chaos, the unsettling, the lack-of-plans is WHERE HE COMES. I’m realizing now that there is spiritual cushioning I experienced in the states, where all was generally well if I was in my home. I could relax easily and be very contented. My family and dearest friends were only a phone call or couple of hours away. Here, my personal contentment has no choice but to come from within my very being from the Spirit. Or it doesn’t come at all. My carefully laid out plans and places of comfort aren’t here to make me feel better or distract me from the holy details of this life. I have to take notice. There’s so much need to take notice of here. I have felt the Spirit’s presence in new and powerful ways. I have felt the movement and action of people's prayers from across miles, bringing us His peace that passes understanding in times that are frustrating and hard. Author Frederick Buechner from his book Telling Truth puts it this way:

I believe that it is when that power is alive in me and through me that I come closest to being truly home, come closest to finding or being found by that holiness that I may have glimpsed in the charity and justice and order and peace of other homes I have known, but that in its fullness was always missing. I cannot claim that I have found the home I long for every day of my life, not by a long shot, but I believe that in my heart I have found, and have maybe always known, the way that leads to it. I believe that Buttrick was right and that the home we long for and belong to is finally where Christ is. I believe that home is Christ's kingdom, which exists both within us and among us as we wend our prodigal ways through the world in search of it.

What’s great about this season is the reminder and Truth that Jesus himself is the Prince of Peace, the very peace we all long and hope for during the whole of our lives. This is the season of his coming. Psalm 90:1 says, "Lord, YOU have been our dwelling place." I can confidently say that I have never known the weight of what this verse means until now. Of course, I have come near to God in prayer and seen his faithful workings for years, but I have never known the depth of what it's like to only have Him and the clothes in our bags. The Lord alone IS our REFUGE and strength. Refuge is not merely having a place to be and rest after a long day's work or internship. Ruminating on what home means, reminds me of college days and the sweet friends who sang with me there and those who made King College what it was. Abbie, Cassie, and I always liked trying to sing three-part harmonies together, mostly songs from the Wailin' Jennys. One of our favorites we sang together was called, "Heaven When We're Home" and I'll provide the link underneath the lyrics if you're interested in listening. Please disregard our banter at the beginning of the recording. My favorite part of it was always the chorus:

It's a long and rugged road

And we don't know where it's headed

But we know it's going to get us where we're going

And when we find what we're looking for

We'll drop these bags and search no more

It's going to feel like heaven when we're home

https://www.dropbox.com/s/336n20oaveu5huw/14%20Heaven%20When%20We%27re%20Home.m4a?dl=0

It's true. We have no idea where we are headed, but we have the hope that he is forever with us. And, ultimately, heaven is the home we are longing for in the end. We have no idea where we'll live in Kimana, yet month to month we have found the place where we can settle in and take each day at a time. This has urged me to think more intentionally of those who experience their own uprootedness this season and beyond, at far greater sacrifice, and/or those who have lost someone significant in their lives. Dear friends, I have to thank you for the fact that I am experiencing this unsettling. And I genuinely thank you. Because of it, I have done a greater amount of both wrestling with and resting in who God says he is. We can believe what he promises. I am thanking him for the small things this month like the ability to get a hot shower, snuggle and read on the couch, and am using this time and season to thank Him for his goodness and mercy to us, those same things that he offers to the people of the world in his coming.

Isaiah 9:6 "For to us a child is born, to us a son is given, and the government will be on his shoulders. And he will be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace."

The Creative Solution

This morning I was reading in Luke 16 when I came across something confusing. As I have re-read the gospels lately, there seems to be a lot of things that seem more confusing than they once were. However, I guess this is a good thing because in Corinthians 8 it says, "If anyone thinks he knows anything, he does not know as he ought to know." So I guess it's a good thing I am learning that I know nothing... It's funny because if you read the gospel quickly and glaze over, it seems simple. But as you seek to delve deeper many times it gets much more confusing. I think this is what Christ was referring to when He talks about hardening hearts, or people having ears but not hearing. It is not until, as He says, we seek, that we find; that we knock, and it is opened to us. So as I started reading my passage in Luke, I began to seek to understand it, and in comparing versions I came across this is the Message, and it presented it to me in a new light. So if you are interested, read it in your own version, and then follow along.

Basically a master tells a manager he is getting fired because he has not done his job, so the manager goes around cutting peoples debts, collecting half the amounts so they will like him when he is fired, and the manager gets some of his stuff back. In Luke 16:8-9 "The master praised the crooked manager! And why? Because he knew how to look after himself. Streetwise people are smarter in this regard than law-abiding citizens. They are on constant alert, looking for angles, surviving by their wits. I want you to be smart in the same way—but for what is right—using every adversity to stimulate you to creative survival, to concentrate your attention on the bare essentials, so you’ll live, really live, and not complacently just get by on good behavior.”

In Kenya, as well as in the states, people are obsessed with looking after themselves. Keeping an eye out for number one! Sadly number one, should usually be the last one we should really be focusing on. Often people are so concerned with surviving, or not even that, but the superfluous stuff that they equate to survival, that they neglect others. We push away others in need to get at the stuff that doesn't even matter. Which raises two questions in my mind, what is needed for survival (what is our daily bread as Christ teaches us to pray for), and where should our focus be?



Daily bread is something I have been learning and reading a lot about lately. Christ teaches us in the Lord's prayer to pray, "Give us this day our daily bread". Give us daily our daily needs. This does not say what is needed down the road, in advance, so we don't have to rely on anyone, but what we need NOW, at this moment, for this day, to get us through. This doesn't say that God will not give us more, or far and beyond what we ask, but we are not to be concerned about it. For the Father knows our needs and takes care of them (Matthew 6).  In order to really trust God, you have to be in need of Him, and often we try take care of ourselves so well that we are never really in need of Him.  So in waiting on Him, and not doing ourselves, we learn to rely on Him daily for our needs.

I am pretty sure that at times God works within whatever parameters we give him. (Of course he is always at work!) What I mean though, in my mind at least, is that if I say, "God I am waiting on you, but while I am waiting I am going to start the process of figuring out fill-in-the-blank". He may show something, but I have limited His operating parameters. Whereas if I say, "God I am waiting on you. It is completely in your hands," He acts without anything I can and would have done, in His way in His timing. It is a difficult thing though to FULLY trust. Most people say, you have to do something and leave room for God to work, don't just sit idle, but I am not sure this is true. Sure we should not be idle, but I think we should be focusing on what God requires of us, the poor, sick, hungry, those in need of the gospel, and let him sort out the extra stuff: car, housing, etc. Not sure it makes sense for both of us to be caught up in trying to sort out the trivial stuff! If we spend more of our time focusing on others, on kingdom work, and not on ourselves we solve the problem of sitting idle and not becoming too caught up on our own needs.  I am trying to learn that balance, and not to wear myself out on stuff that is not kingdom oriented. He knows our needs and that's all I can ask for. For He is the Giver of all good things. So seek first the kingdom of God, and His righteousness, and pray, "Give us THIS day our bread." Let us trust on the Lord in "creative" survival.