Yes, we do have confidence, and we would rather be away from the body and at home with the Lord. So whether we are at home or away, we make it our aim to please him.
From now on, therefore, we regard no one from a human point of view; even though we once knew Christ from a human point of view, we know him no longer in that way. So if anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation: everything old has passed away; see, everything has become new!
How do you come 'home' to God right now? Many of us think of 'going home' to God as the moment when we die, but this passage suggests perhaps that it is something different. It is a sort of 'shedding' of our old skin and the taking on of a new one. Like the moment of baptism.
In the movie E.T., an extra-terrestrial being from another planet befriends a young boy. The journey they take is a remarkable one as they realize that feeling 'at home' with someone is simply making the effort to know and understand them. They also learn that always being together doesn't always mean you are in the same place (or on the same planet) at the same time.
What is home to you? Is it a place or is it people? I wrote a blog a couple of years ago now about the Finale song in the musical "In the Heights." I want to share it with you here. It gets at this feeling of finding your true home. Here it is:
Tuesday, August 10, 2010
Home is our Destiny
Why does the Finale of "In The Heights," the Broadway musical, always make me cry? This morning I nearly had to
pull my car over because the tears were clouding my vision as I was driving to
work listening to the song.
That song is so
powerful. It suggests that we are a part of a greater legacy than we can ever
imagine. That our lives are intricately connected to the lives of those who
have come before us. It suggests that, even though we all get to choose our own
way in the world, sometimes our way is chosen for us by those who came before
us. We may walk it differently than those who came before, but we are a part of
a continuous thread that lasts beyond our time.
Usnavi, the lead character of the show,
is all set to take some lottery winnings he inherited and head to his roots in
the Dominican Republic. The lottery-winning matriarch of the street
corner they all lived on, a lady everyone called grandma, ‘Abuela,’ wants this
for him. When she dies unexpectedly, he (and all the other characters)
are forced to re-evaluate what has true meaning in their lives.
He finally realizes his true destiny is
to keep Abuela’s legacy alive on that street corner. If he leaves there, who
will keep her voice alive? “This corner is my destiny”... he says...not
the island of his birth, but the corner of Washington Heights where he was
formed. His journey, his way in the world, was set in place by others. He
wanted to escape it, but it was a part of a bigger-than-life legacy that he
needed to keep moving forward. He had to be the standard bearer for another
generation.
The way this song gets to me is in the
sheer power of recognizing ‘home’ and what that is for us. The ‘home’ in our
lives is that force that pulls us, sometimes without our desire or even our
recognition, to a place we belong... Home is not necessarily just a place, but
also a feeling, a forward movement in time that joins all of our past with all
of our future... Home is the conduit between yesterday and tomorrow.
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