Craving a Lasting Home

Written By Eric Nielsen

Recently, I moved from Toronto to Chicago. I am proud to be a resident of this great city of the world with its booming architecture, cultural arts, and next to none lakeshore. It makes me want to jubilantly sing the lyrics of Frank Sinatra’s “Chicago”. Perhaps you are proud of where you live now. Or maybe you’re saying to me right now “You’re crazy, this is not home”. Well if where you live now does not feel like home, where is your true home?

We live in a complex, globalized age where the definition of “home” is changing. Decades ago, we were more localized than we are today. Our food was local, we knew our neighbours, we had more face-to-face contact with people. Home was your immediate surroundings.

But today, you can talk for free to anyone in the world at the click of a button, read the morning news in Delhi, and view holiday photos of people you have never met on Facebook. Today’s vision of home, reinforced through internet and social media, is a future-oriented, global village which we are inventing as we go along in life. Home defined this way, is feeling closer to your chat room correspondents than your next door neighbors.

So where is our lasting home? I think its immediately in the here-and-now but ultimately in the future.

Let me illustrate.

As my wife and I were getting packed up in Toronto to move, saying goodbye to friends, and preparing for the unknown new beginning in Chicago, I felt both sad and reassured. I was sad because part of me wanted to stay rooted in the community of people I became close with in Toronto. It felt like home and part of it was.

Yet on the other hand, I knew that if I put my ultimate hope in Toronto as my home, or any other place as my home in the here and now, I would be disappointed. This is because if I put my hope in something that can change, something that can be taken away from me, I can never truly rest secure and say I am home. To have a lasting home is to have a secure home. No place we call home now can satisfy that. I knew then and believe now that our lasting home is eternal.

That day I was reassured because I knew my ultimate home was future-oriented, awaiting me in heaven. How could I know heaven is my home? I certainly could not know this on the basis of my own moral efforts since they are insufficient. Instead, my certainty rests on the historical truth that Jesus, who is God, has come down to us and paid the price for our moral failing. By resting on Jesus work for me, I can be assured that he has made me acceptable before God and has now made heaven my home.

I was sad leaving my home in Toronto that day, but was reassured that because heaven is my lasting home, I can press on knowing that the best is yet to come.

Where is your true home? Is it here and now or in the future to come?