What does it mean to go home?

I’ve been pondering this for the last few days, as I have been at home in Paducah, Ky visiting family. I was born here, grew up here and lived here until I went away to college. I moved back for a few years after I graduated from University of Kentucky, while working as a school social worker in the McCracken County school system.

For the most part I have been gone 35 years. And yet…

When I come to Paducah, I still feel “home”.

As I drive down the familiar streets, memories flood my mind. I drive by a house that I spent the night in with my girlfriends, where we had sorority initiation, restaurants we ate at, schools I walked home from,houses we TP’d, and various other childhood and teenage memories of things I did growing up in Paducah.

Now if I wasn’t here in Paducah for Thanksgiving I doubt those memories would be popping up in my head as I drive around. The smells of Bar-B-Que…yummy. Everything that reminds me of a place I still call home.

The bible teaches that for Christians heaven is our home

How can heaven be our home when we have never been there?

I know that when I travel, as much as I enjoy my time away from home, I’ve often said “this is a beautiful place but it doesn’t “feel” like home.” Or when I finally arrive back at my home say, “I am so thankful to be back home.”

I believe I do this because home is a place that is familiar. Home brings up memories of family, friends, gatherings, streets, houses…everything that is familiar. Jesus said heaven is our home, that means just as our physical homes on earth are familiar so will our heavenly home when we get there.

Currently I am in the process of updating some things in my home to… maybe or maybe not sell. Regardless, of what I am doing to redecorate…it is not the redecorating that will change the feeling of comfort I get when I walk in the door and sigh knowing I am home.

The first thing I always do whether I have been at the office for a few hours or a trip is get comfortable, I take off my clothes and put on “comfy clothes.”Home is a place I relax, feel comfortable and at peace. It is where I want to be.

Since the departing of Jamie, “Lilly Bear” and Mike I rarely want to go anywhere. I like being at home. I feel comfortable there, at peace.

If heaven is called our true home, and life on earth is a dot along a long line of eternity then heaven must have the same characteristic’s we associate with here on earth with home.

C.S. Lewis called earth a Shadowland. I love to picture Planet Earth like that…a Shadowland.  A shadow is nothing more than a reflection of the true reality.

Randy Alcorn, (my favorite author on the subject of heaven) said,

Home as a term for heaven is not simply a metaphor.It describes an actual, physical place —a place built by our bridegroom, a place we’ll share with loved ones, a place of fond familiarity and comfort and refuge, a place of marvelous smells and tastes, fine food and great conversation, of contemplation and interaction and expressing the gifts and passions God’s given us.

Heaven is a place not a spiritual realm we can’t relate too. Heaven is our home with all the love,feelings and smells we think about when we reflect on our earthly homes. Jesus said, if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come back and take you to be with me that you also may be where I am.

Our home’s and heaven are both places that are familiar, and comfortable.

Although we don’t know or understand everything about where we will live and spend eternity, Jesus left us too many examples of things we can know about our eternal home.

Sometimes it is hard to grasp where we will live I’ll admit that. But we know that Heaven is a place where we will be with those we loved on earth plus multitudes of people from every nation, tongue and tribe that we called according to his plan and purpose.

2 Cor. 5:1-8

For we know that if the tent that is our earthly home is destroyed, we have a building from God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens. 2 For in this tent we groan, longing to put on our heavenly dwelling, 3 if indeed by putting it on we may not be found naked. 4 For while we are still in this tent, we groan, being burdened—not that we would be unclothed, but that we would be further clothed, so that what is mortal may be swallowed up by life. 5 He who has prepared us for this very thing is God, who has given us the Spirit as a guarantee.6 So we are always of good courage. We know that while we are at home in the body we are away from the Lord, 7 for we walk by faith, not by sight. 8 Yes, we are of good courage, and we would rather be away from the body and at home with the Lord.

Heaven will be familiar just like Paducah is familiar. It is our living hope. 

We will know we are home.