Home is...

Over the last few months, I have had a lot of opportunity to think about home, to miss home, to dream of home, to leave home, to go home.  I have, in fact, spent more time on airplanes during the last eight months, than I have in the last 8 years.

In my current job in missions mobilization, my regional responsibility spans from Nebraska to Washington, Montana to New Mexico (and Hawaii and Alaska).  As such, I have been given the unexpected pleasure of returning "home" to many of the places I once called home.  I've gotten to go back to California several times.  I've traveled to Seattle (where my dad grew up and I spent time over the years).  I'm about to hop up to Montana, where I lived for four years.  And right now, I'm sitting at a coffee shop on the California central coast, a place Ashley and I called home for 9 months back in 2010.

In these travels I have often felt the warm fuzzies of a "homecoming."  I happened when I stepped into the cold Pacific waters in La Jolla, CA.  It happened when I flew into LAX and looked out over the grey landscape of Los Angeles.  It happened when I drove along Hwy 1 and looked out into the ocean, and when I threw on my running shoes for a jog in Montana de Oro State Park.   It happened when I saw the offramp for Bellevue, WA, and when I booked my tickets for Bozeman, Montana.  It happened when I strolled around BIOLA's campus (though now hardly recognizable to me).  And it happens every time I bite into an In-N-Out Double Double (of which I have eaten many on my trips back "home."

Yet, even while I have these moments of warmth as I feel, smell, hear, taste, and experience "home," I find something seriously amiss.  What is it?  Why, in the midst of "home" do I still feel like something is missing.

I think it's because home isn't a place.  It isn't a house, a neighborhood, a school or community.  It is a person.

Our "home" is only a home because of the person or persons who make it so.  For me, home in this world is Ashley.  I have told her over the years that home is wherever she is at, and I believe it more now then ever before.

Ashley and I have moved six times in the last eight years (not just homes, but also cities).  In that time, I have lived in many houses, and while I had strong feelings associated with those houses, it was only because of the woman I shared them with.  It was home, because my bride was in it.

I think that's how heaven works too.  Over the years I have heard it said that when a believer dies, they are going "home" to be be with Christ.  In other words, we recognize that we are strangers in this world, and that our real home is in heaven.  As it says in Philippians 3:20, "For our citizenship is in heaven, from which we eagerly wait for a Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ."  In heaven is Jesus Christ.  Now, I'm sure heaven itself is a great place.  There is no pain or sorrow.  There is no hunger or thirst.  But it is a place.  What makes it home?  Jesus Christ makes it home.  Heaven is home because the person of Jesus Christ is there.  Our true home is heaven not because of what it is, but because of who it is.  Without the person of Jesus Christ, we can never truly be home.

Now, as I travel around the country and the world, I get to experience a homecoming on a regular basis.  The same feelings I get when I fly into CA I get when I return to Denver now.  It happens when the wheels touch down at DIA.  It happens when I stop for a cup of coffee at Two Rivers.  It happens when I walk up my drive-way.  But, as much as I feel glad for those things, I am not home until I wrap my arms around my bride.  That is when I am home in this world.  But this home, as wonderful and amazing as it is, is still but a shadow of the final homecoming.  Someday I will get to wrap my arms around my savior, Jesus Christ.  Then, and only then, will I finally and forever be home.

Until then, I'll have to on enjoying hugging my wife...and grabbing the occasional In-N-Out.