Home from home

One of the joys of being single is that kind people, from time to time, let you into their lives for a while. It may be through opening their lives up to you in friendship or being a guest in their home.

Sometimes I am invited to house-sit for friends, to come and look after their home while they are away. Then they leave food and give you a chance to have a change of scene. It is an act of kindness and friendship even though you do not have their company during that time.

Of course, living for a while in someone else's home is not like being in your own. You are very much aware that you are in a space that has been formed and fashioned by others. It is their history that is all around you, not yours. But in some ways it doesn't matter to me so much. As I am the only occupant at my home address, there are limits to what I can do by way of homebuilding. When I leave the bungalow to go on holiday I haven't exactly left behind a place with my own stamp on it.

Thus, when I return, it will be to roof over my head, the place where I store my things, rather than being "home" in the sense of a family home. So that makes the experience of being in somebody else's home quite a novelty. I see their interests displayed in every room: their hobbies, the pictures and photographs of ones they love. The wife in the home where I go is a keen gardener and the garden is colourful and beautiful; it has her imprint all over it. I particularly love relaxing in the family's sun lounge, where even more plants are growing in profusion.

My experience reminds me of my Saviour when He was on earth. Jesus said that the Son of Man has nowhere to lay His head. Even foxes have their holes and birds their nests, but He, the Lord of all, with a right to feel at home anywhere in the universe, is denied that advantage while on the earth. He too was blessed by the hospitality of others: various prominent women of the neighbourhood undertook to look after Him, to give Him somewhere to stay and to meet His needs. He never allowed Himself to forget the blessing of their hospitality. But he was acutely aware that His home was somewhere else: His home was in heaven.

I remember disappointing one lady, many years ago, when she asked me what turned out to be a trick question: where did I consider to be home? I said I didn't know; I went through a list of a number of places which had had significance for me during my life, but I wasn't sure. "Oh," she replied, "I thought you would say your home was in heaven." 

I felt intensely irritated. It seemed to me that I had been caught out and I had not come up with the expected pious answer. I had not, in other words, met expectations. I still feel uncomfortable about that to this day. Of course, it goes without saying that home for a thorough Christian is not on earth but elsewhere. We already live under a new set of neighbourhood rules, the laws of the kingdom of heaven. We have a new head of government. The King in all His beauty and majesty is close at hand all the time, running the affairs of this precious kingdom. Believers once there will never feel out of place again.

Some people comment that I often look like a lost soul wandering around. If that is a witness to my belief that this life isn't all there is and I am not earthbound, I can't be going far wrong.