Making a Home

My wife and I have been talking lately about what it means to “make our home” in Fredericksburg, where we moved last month. It’s been a bit strange in that on the one hand, we’ve been here for about a month or so now, so there’s a sense in which we’ve been “making our home” here for all that time – getting acquainted with the church, both the facility and congregation/staff, finding our way around town, etc. But on the other hand, we’ve only been in the house for a week (we lived in our 5th-wheel trailer for a month!), so we’re only beginning to “make our home” there. So it’s been a bit odd.

Of course, living the life of an itinerant United Methodist pastor, and my wife even living the life of an “Army brat” in her growing up years, home for us has a different meaning than it does for folks who’ve lived in the same community their whole lives (some even in the same house). One of the ways she is making this parsonage (i.e., church-provided home for the pastor) our “home” is filling the tops of the kitchen cabinets with all sorts of knick-knacks, etc. all of which have a special value or meaning from her life and our life together. That helps her to feel like it’s “home.”

I remember our daughter (who’s now almost 24) wrote an essay or paper while in college on this subject, and of course, did so from the perspective of the child of an itinerant pastor. Her main thesis was that for her, who has made her home in different communities, schools, neighborhoods, congregations, and houses, “home” is our family. That’s where the anchor is. She identified home not with place or location, but relationship. It’s also true, however, that as an itinerant parsonage family, we experienced a lot of change in other relationships.

But it occurs to me that these dynamics are true for many of the rest of us, as well, even those who’ve lived in one community their whole lives. The landscape changes, relationships change (old ones fade away, new ones come along, and the others go through changes, as well). For any of us, the only relationship that is constant is our relationship with God. Of course, that one changes, too – but it’s because we (hopefully) grow; God never changes. His faithfulness never wavers.

The Christian life is referred to both in Scripture and other Christian literature not as a place, location, or even set of human relationships in which we settle, but rather a journey – a “walk” in which we travel. As disciples of Jesus Christ, we “follow” – we move, rather than park ourselves. We are pilgrims, not settlers. But our most important relationship – the one we have with God – anchors us so we can move and be open to change; in our relationships and sometimes in our location. As a song about the Christian life says, “The journey is our home.”

My goal is to be so anchored in my relationship with Jesus Christ that I’m able to be open to all the new places and new relationships as I “make my home” in a new place.