A tug toward home

[Brent Kipfer]

I grew up on a farm with my brothers, parents, great-grandfather and I living in one house and grandparents in another. Neither my grandmother nor my father had ever lived anywhere else. To my young mind, this home carried a deep sense of stability - almost permanence. Our house, farm buildings - and even the land itself - seemed to burst with stories rooting us to that place.

The farm has since been sold - a reminder that life involves transition and discipleship is about pilgrimage. Still, when I drive past it, my heart is pulled toward the land that was home for the first nineteen years of my life. I have now lived with my own family in a small town for almost seven years. I know that my children have similar feelings about our house.

I am about to begin a sabbatical, including a two-month family mission trip to Belize. I know that this will unsettle us to some extent. That is healthy and good. It is too easy to forget that our current home is temporary. For a short time, home will be in a place have not yet seen and in a culture we do not know. I expect that we will have experiences of “home� there - even as we at times long for the home we left behind.

When I feel the tug toward home, I want to receive it as an invitation to look beyond the specific geography I know to the more enduring house that our chief Shepherd is preparing for us. It reflects a deeper longing for heaven - and my identity as a pilgrim seeking a homeland.