It's Where I've Felt at Home

Home. I have felt it in many places.

I have felt it sitting on the porch swing at my parents’ house in Ohio, as I look out into the woods and pastures I have known my whole life.

I have called different camps home, as I walk through the dining hall or sit on the dock.

I now call my house I live at in Louisville home. I feel it when I grab my coffee and a chair and sit in front of the sliding glass door and look at the backyard.

I thought maybe home was places you are familiar with.  Then I thought about how I have said, “It just feels like home” when I have only been there for a few days. Why is that?

I have felt at home walking on the sand in the Outer Banks on vacation.

I have felt at home sitting on a roof in India, riding a bike though a town in Germany, reading a book in Nicaragua, and dancing with gypsies in Turkey.

So, the feeling of home can come in a place I have only just stepped foot in.

 I have felt at home in places I didn't blend in or didn't speak the language. I think that home is where you have a sense of belonging, even though I didn't look like I belonged while walking down the road in India. And I didn't sound like I belonged when I opened my mouth to talk in Germany.

Maybe it’s not that I have to look the part or sound the part, it’s simply the fact that my heart yells “I belong here!” But how can I belong to so many houses, to so many bunk beds, to so many nations? I don’t. But I belong to a God that walks and runs with me. He has made his home in my heart and my heart travels with me wherever I go.

But where is my home? If God has made a home in my heart, where is my home?

It’s not here, not yet. My home is in heaven and heaven has yet to come to earth, but we’re bringing it here, one day at a time.

It’s in the places that I have felt at home that I have seen a glimpse of heaven.

It’s been while sitting on the floor, walking down a road and laughing with others that I have known home.

It’s where I have seen his Kingdom come; his will be done, right here on earth just as it is in heaven.

Welcome Home.