There’s no place like home.
There’s no place like home.
There’s no place like home.
Some of you are wondering why I just repeated the same sentence. Others of you are imagining yourself standing in the Land of Oz, wearing ruby red slippers, clicking your heels together three times.
“There’s no place like home” became iconic following the 1939 movie, The Wizard of Oz. The film tells the tale of Dorothy Gale who lives on a farm in Kansas with her dog Toto, Aunt Em and Uncle Henry. Dorothy seeks shelter in her bedroom from an approaching tornado, but the window gets blown in, hits her in the head, and knocks her unconscious. The house is sent spinning into the air and lands in Munchkinland in the Land of Oz.
Chances are you know the rest of the story as Dorothy follows the yellow brick road to Emerald City making friends with the Scarecrow, the Tin Man, and the Cowardly Lion along the journey to find her way home. In the end, all Dorothy needed to do was close her eyes, click the heels of her ruby red slippers together three times and say, “There’s no place like home.”
But what if “home” isn’t a single place? I pondered that question after a conversation with Michelle Klay as she and her family were packing and preparing to leave their home in Florida and return to their home in Africa. What if you have multiple places that you call home, and your heart is torn between the two? I imagine when you are in America a portion of your heart longs to be in Africa and when you are standing on African soil, a part of you wishes you were in America. If you are at home in two different places, two cultures, two continents, do you ever feel at home? There’s no place like home, but where is home?
I got my answer the very next day as I took in the words of Psalm 90. “Lord, you have been our dwelling place throughout all generations.” I don’t know how you would describe a “dwelling place”, but I would call it HOME.
This particular Psalm is a prayer written by Moses. I would guess Moses struggled with his home identity. He was born in a Hebrew village, raised in an Egyptian palace, fled to the land of Midian and started a family there, only to return to Egypt, and then eventually wander in a desert for 40 years. Where was home? The land of Canaan was supposed to be his destination, a place where he could finally put down some roots and unpack his bags, but he never even crossed the threshold.
However, God graciously revealed to Moses along the way that his focus wasn’t supposed to be on a place, but on Him. God’s presence was the only place Moses needed to reside. And Moses could honestly say, Lord, you have been our dwelling place, our refuge, our safe house, our hideout, our sanctuary, our HOME.
The same can be true for us. It would be my prayer for those who say they are followers of Christ, that you could claim the words of Psalm 84:1-2. “How lovely is your dwelling place, O Lord Almighty! My soul yearns, even faints, for the courts of the Lord; my heart and my flesh cry out for the living God.”
In the words of an old song, “This world is not my home, I’m just passing through.”
Erin Jacobsma
(By the way, Caleb & Michelle and boys arrived safely at their home in Africa. Yay, God!)