I'm Coming Home

At the beginning of the summer, I wrote down 3 things I wanted to see come out of time traveling in Europe.  These prayer requests were things too big for me to achieve, but they required consistent effort on my part.  They are as follows:

1. Fully finance the entire Africa Video Project ($35,000)
2. Conversations to change me and change others.
3. Teach me that Christ is my “Home.”

Prayer is … well … confusing at times and at the same inspiring.  I haven’t seen these desires come to fruition the way I had hoped, but still I can’t shake a certainty that they have been answered.

This is best illustrated by the last item on my list. In June, I gave up my apartment in the hope and expectation of being able to start this video project when I returned from Europe. That hasn’t gone according to my plans. I am still living out of two bags and trying to figure out where to go and stay. Part of this I anticipated and hence my prayer at the beginning of the summer.  And yet God hasn’t answered it. Even now that I’m back in the US, I don’t feel any more “at home” than I did sitting in a hotel room in Munich. It would be a lie to say, “I’m not homeless, because Jesus is my home.”

I have often pleaded this summer, “Lord, be my home. I’m tired of not knowing where to return to, of not having anything grounding me, of just floating by with nothing holding me to the ground.”  In reflecting on this summer, I have begun to see that is exactly what He wanted to teach me.  I am homeless.  

Chicago is not my home. Kentucky is not my home.  No place on this planet is my home.  I am a sojourner wandering through these lands and every once in awhile I see a glimpse of my home.  In the smiles of friends, the hugs of family, the laughter of strangers, the singing of the church, the encouragement of scriptures, and the beauty of a sunrise over cloud skirted mountains.  

But these are not my home and so I must carry on, confident that one day I will cross the threshold and drop my bags, kick off my shoes, and breathe in that refreshing aroma of “home.” 

Until that day, I am homeless.