Returning Home

I am preparing to pay a visit to my home island of Guernsey, Channel Islands, this week. The event brings into play a strange set of feelings.

On the one hand, Guernsey is special because it is my birthplace and the place where I grew up. My parents and I left there in 1971 when I was 18. Like many people I have become more patriotic since my move than when I was a resident! I still cheerfully stick up for Guernsey - especially when the traditional rivalry between Guernsey and Jersey comes into play.

On the other hand, the act of moving on is two-sided. I have moved on, but so has the island. Of course, much of the landscape will be familiar and so will many of the buildings - give or take the successive coats of paint each will have received in the past 45 years. Even among the people I knew, a fair few are still around.

I value lasting friendships, especially with island Christians. It was on the island that I came to know Jesus as my Saviour, with their help. During the Spring before I left, I went to a conference for workers with young people. An awkward so-and-so at the time, I let it be known that I thought prayer and conversion were childish ideas. A minister rounded on me - it was the first time anyone had ever really challenged me - and pointed out that my thinking was just like any old Western philosophy; I did not think the way God’s word, the Bible, did. I felt humbled, indeed crushed.

Down-to-earth believers in the Deaf Christian Fellowship that my mother attended had already been breaking down my resistance for some time. Their homespun truths were filling in some of the tragic gaps there were in my understanding. Their simple remedy for unbelief was to trust in the shed blood of Jesus Christ and accept Him as your Lord and Saviour. I knew I would have no peace until I did just that. It was a turning point. As well as being born there, I was now born again there!

Thus I indirectly owe to Guernsey my place in heaven. I’ve been glad to go back from time to time and celebrate that with believing friends. Yet in other respects my status now is that of just another visitor from the Mainland. No doubt one can spend a very happy retirement in Guernsey, but it would be quite impracticable now for me to consider putting down roots there once more. Home is elsewhere.

A Psalm speaks of the specialness of Zion to God’s people:

On the holy mount stands the city he founded;
the LORD loves the gates of Zion
more than all the dwelling places of Jacob.
Glorious things of you are spoken, O city of God.
Among those who know me I mention Rahab and Babylon;
behold, Philistia and Tyre, with Cush —
“This one was born there,” they say.
And of Zion it shall be said,
“This one and that one were born in her”;
for the Most High himself will establish her.
The LORD records as he registers the peoples,
“This one was born there.”
Singers and dancers alike say,
“All my springs are in you.”

Psalm 87 ESV

It is easier to settle in some places on earth than in others. But in the end the Christian’s home and identity are with his or her Saviour in heaven.