Settlement Life

As another journey looms near following an 8-week placement in Africa there comes with it all the necessary packing arrangements, packing the house away so its ready for the next people to arrive, the travel details are now starting to come, needing attention “I hope now can I get an upgrade once again?”    O yes who can I ask to collect us?     While considering these details we are looking back on what we have seen, what we have learned about God, his will and ourselves along with what we have been allowed to put our hands with while being in Africa, thoughts and considerations rush through my mind.

One question we have often been asked as we live life whilst trying to keep obedient to the mind and will of God for our lives.   We trust that every step, action, involvement, every major decision such as a home in Cape Town has a direction of God that we are trying to be obedient to,  so that our lives actually live in worship to him – obedience which is worship our “sacrifice of worship”.

Back to the question “where is your home, Cape Town, Coventry, UK, South Africa?”    My reply is often spoken firstly with a smile “where the heart is followed then by my body and I trust my body is with my heart”.     Yet where is home for each of us? what makes our home?  is it the environment or even the place where I was born and grew up or just where family and people are.   I think we would find differences of definition and places for many on where  your home is.

Try this never mind what age you are having left your parents house to get married or move to university and never return, or even moved out for work, whether you left recently or years ago, do you still “go home” to visit mum and dad? Yet following your visit do you then “go home” again?    I wonder what we do to language with “going home” does the context give us an indication of where home is?  So where is your home?     Having my parents both now passed on did my language change?   or did it change when my mother finally sold our family home several years ago, did home disappear then?

Home, what is your home?  Where is your home?  Are we always traveling towards home, I wonder?

Home opens up a whole view in my mind on dwelling and being at rest and “at home” a place where there is a security, a place of retreat where you find peace and stillness, however I know for some it may not be like this.    My heart and prayer cries on God for those who cannot find this, a place to call home what ever the home looks like and where ever it is placed in this world.

I Know this as well its a place where you have built characteristics into where we call hoe mot find that stillness that pace of being able to retreat to safety and solace where love might be found it does not just happen fully but we have to invest to see it and experience it.

I was reading Psalm 91 that commenced this thought pattern in me Verse 1 & 9 of the Psalm it says “You who sit down in the High God’s presence, spend the night in Shaddai’s shadow…Yes, because God’s your refuge, the High God your very own home…” we are presented with God the Father being our “…very own home…” I respond to that, I make him my abode.   He becomes the place where I kick off my shoes and put my feet up, put on my PJs’ early when no one else will call, where I can just  be me, chilled out.    Perhaps for some this is too easy-going language while relating to the a dwelling place of God the abode of God, the in him,  then the pace I find my rest, security, peace to be off guard.

The Psalm sounds more familiar for us in a traditional translation here its is again “…He who dwells in the shelter of the Most High Will abide in the shadow of the Almighty…For you have made the Lord, my refuge, Even the Most High, your dwelling place…^”

Still the question remains where is your home, dwelling place and what is the environment you have in this home, my encouragement to you is to find and make your home in Him, find a way to be in him as  a constant living way of life,  not as a holiday, or as a visitor or a need for council, but t make home in him as a consistent living way never to depart.   He will not remove it from you, he made it possible, so why do we not occupy his possibility.

We are encouraged in the scripture to take on a pilgrim attitude to this world looking for a place; Abraham called it a city, where the foundation and maker is the Father.   As we bring the dimensions of his Kingdom or bring the Fathers home to the cosmos and we are actively involved in transforming this world we have the merging of Heaven and Earth and  he becomes our home.    Pilgrim towards our ultimate goal and his intention making Him our home.    We are living an ever emergent life from him being our home, with discovery and revelation, more and more of his Kingdom, the taste of the age to come is with us as we enjoy him as our home.

SO WHERE is home? … WHY is that home? … WHAT makes it home? … WHO is at your home?

GOD YOUR VERY OWN HOME!