"Where is home?"

“Where is your home?”

I heard a sermon this past winter that ended with this question ''Where is your home?" … and it has stayed with me ever since.

The on-line dictionary says that “home is a place where one lives permanently, a residence, a dwelling or an institution for people needing special care.”

One friend of mine says her home is by the sea, while another says hers is in the Far East. Both of them live in southern Ontario, but have a feeling of coming home when they visit those places.

What has me thinking is just what it is that makes them feel at home … and why. I would hazard a guess that it is a feeling of comfort, of belonging, in that particular milieu.

As I searched the internet, I came across these quotes of definitions of ‘home’:

“Home means sanctuary.”

“Home for me means total acceptance.”

“Home is a soft place to land.”

“I work at a non-profit organization serving the homeless and they have taught me that home is where you are treated with dignity and respect, and where you feel safe and deserving, even on the worst days.”

“Home isn't a place, it’s a feeling.”

That least one sums it all up for me. Home, despite what the dictionary says, is not a place …or if it is, it is a place that changes constantly.

As I read the quotes above, I can’t help thinking that the one place we should all feel is ‘home’ is our church community… and not only ‘our’ church community, but any church community.. and yet how seldom that is the case. So seldom, in fact, that when you do happen across a church community that makes you feel that way, you perceive them as something different and unusual.

I happened upon such a community lately, and I can attest that, for me, it is an almost unheard of experience! It is the community of Westhill United Church in the east end of Toronto. What is different is hard to put your finger on. The first time I attended a service I was treated not like ‘a newcomer’ but rather like a friend they were just meeting but had always known. Conversations quickly skipped the ‘niceties’ of where do you live, etc and move on to them telling me what their theologies were, and what was important to them and we quickly ended up comparing authors, books, and speakers, as well as discovering new ones. The ideas flowed, the acceptance was total, and the vulnerability real on both sides. The second and third visits, several weeks apart, did not disappoint, as I continued to feel ‘at home’, safe, deserving and accepted.

So let me ask you, where you have felt ‘at home’ lately … and more importantly, why?

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