Why I Believe in Staying at Home

There's a familiar chair, a familiar smell, a familiarity quite unlike any other.

Home.

There are those who are homeless, homesick, homebound, homeschooled. Some are homemakers,

homebuilders, home inspectors. Home pages, home bases, and home games are all around us.

The advantage is at home.

These days I find myself gravitating towards home. I'm an extrovert by nature, thriving on a crowd of people I don't know, but as I find myself in a bigger unknown crowd I long for one on one conversations. I long for the time, the leisure, the contented and anti-anxious pace that comes in only one place I know.

Home.

Jesus had a home - a place called Capernaum. It wasn't home in the sense that we speak of home, where our stuff and our protection against the world are found, but instead it was a place where He visited often. It was a place of comfort, a place of renewal, a place where he was with those who knew him and welcomed him.

What must it be like to be city that welcomes the savior of the world - the home base of the Kingdom of God - the place He called home.

It seems like a logical thing to do, to seek the things that Jesus sought. The things that gave life back to Him in the midst of healing, teaching and otherwise revolution-bearing work of the Kingdom. To seek home.

The natural conclusion is that home is where we find our place with God. The place of Sabbath rest, the place of getting our heart and soul healthy and ready for whatever stands in front of us. The place of letting down our well-structured facades, well-worn masks that we present to the world. The place with our favorite cups, seats, blankets and smells.

Home is not a birth place. It is not a house. It is not even a city. Jesus' birthplace was Bethlehem, His hometown was Nazareth, and his ministry was one of travel. When the day closed on his energy, however, Jesus returned to Capernaum for reasons we can only speculate because Scripture doesn't always answer our questions.

What we have to believe is that it was a place of thinness - the place where Jesus was with His father in the most productive and rested of ways.

So I long for home. My soft cotton sleep pants and worn out thrift store t-shirt, the way my favorite mug feels filled with tea, the sound of my family laughing and wine glasses clinking, that is home. It is a place where I am as I most exist before God.

It is where I come back.

It is where I find reconnection and depth.

A homecoming to God and all that He is in the real and touchable world.

Home.