Give Me a (Left) Hand: "Home is Where the Heart Is"

God told Abram: “Leave your country, your family, and your father’s home for a land that I will show you.

So Abram left just as God said, and Lot left with him. Abram was seventy-five years old when he left Haran. Abram took his wife Sarai and his nephew Lot with him, along with all the possessions and people they had gotten in Haran, and set out for the land of Canaan and arrived safe and sound.

Home is many things to many people. Many places. Many faces. Many feelings and stirrings within your heart. But it is never the same for any two people. Even if you are from the same family and grew up in the same house, home is defined differently for each of you by your heart. The phrase "home is where the heart is" then, is possibly the truest statement ever. Home is best defined by our hearts and not our eyes or our heads.

In this scripture, God tells Abram that he has to leave the only home he has ever known in Haran and go out into a place that he has never been to before. He is not young and eager to make the journey. He has lived a whole long life in this place and is now being asked to start all over again.

Anyone who has ever moved knows how hard THAT is... to pick up all you have and move somewhere else. It's hard no matter if it is down the street or across the country. But particularly when it is to a new place, a new geography, a new culture... it is hard to feel settled in... and hard to feel at home. And so you have to sort of redefine for yourself what home might mean.

I remember the moment I decided that home needed redefining for me. We lived in Durham, NC. Our son Jake was about four years old. And we decided not to go to see our families in Tennessee for the holidays. The traffic is too bad, the journey is too long. It just wasn't a fun experience. My heart ached a bit inside because I had never not celebrated a holiday away from Tennessee. But I remember sitting in the tiny square of a hallway between the two bedrooms and thinking... "But this is my home now. Todd and Jake are my home." And what a comforting thought that was to me and that thought and the feeling behind it has stayed with me ever since. We have lived in lots of different houses... but home has never changed... it is any place the three of us happen to end up in together. New York, Colorado, a tent in Moab... wherever we three are that is home.

For Abram, the story doesn't tell us if it was a struggle for him mentally, emotionally or physically to go. It just says "So Abram left just as God said." God was creating a moment where Abram and Sarai were going to be forced to redefine home for themselves. And it was so that doors that would never have been opened would have the chance to open.

What doors do we need to allow to open to create homes for people in our congregation? How do we define 'church home?' Why does God sometimes call us far from home? Why does God sometimes also call us 'back home?' What does 'home is where the heart is' mean in your life?

Email me at peverhart@niwotumc.org or comment below.