Monday Morning Music Ministry

7-22-19

Among the memories of the Moon Landing this week are the realizations I have learned through the years that certain words like “moon” have common sounds and spellings in myriad languages and cultures scattered across the globe. “Sun” is another; “mother” and “father” also. What sort of coincidences are these? Pilgrims in ancient days, in small groups or tribes, traversing swaths of land or ocean expanses?

If that were the answer, why were not cultural objects, or tools and utensils, or more words and alphabets, also transplanted? Why only those elemental words? Is it because these are more concepts than mere words? If we ever are to learn the answers to these compelling questions, I think it will have more to do with common physical touchstones, urges, and expressive emotions, than with linguistics or semantics. (For instance, some social scientists think that the “M” sound as in Mama and Mother derives from babies’ physical need for nurture, an expression of hunger.)

In any event, “home” is not only a place but, indeed, a concept. Its name, and of course its essential idea, is common to all people, all classes, all ages. Among nobility and peasantry, in democratic societies and autocracies, the home is sacred. Taken further, the kitchen as the home’s heart is common too.

When we think on these things, we realize more than perhaps we often do, the real distinction between house and home. A house is where we get our bills, a song once said; home is where we live.

The Bible has many verses about home, both literal and figurative references. The same is true of poetry, songs, literature… think about it, every aspect of life. “Homemade,” the best you could want. “Home-going,” a term now in vogue in some churches, instead of a funeral or farewell. “Home town” usually obviates the necessity for an explanation of things honest, pure, accepting.

In college I had a friend, a bit of a strange guy, on the dorm floor; but maybe he was wiser than all of us. One evening we were all talking about our hometowns or neighborhoods where we grew up. And we shared photos, if we had them. Danny pulled out a photo from his wallet – a rather unremarkable snapshot, really, of the side of a house. No distinctive flowers or trees, fancy back yard, or a landscaped front yard and porch. Odd?

Danny explained that the photo was not of his house as we had assumed. It was his neighbor’s house. It was what he would see, looking out his bedroom window. When he woke up; when he went to sleep. That’s what he saw, and carried with him, the neighbor’s house.

“And that reminds me of home,” he said.

Yes. Of course. So logical we seldom think that way.

What reminds you of home? Your parent’s address; where you grew up? One of multiples places you have lived? A location in the “old country”? We need (anyway, I know that I need!) to think a little more – a lot more – of what God means by home.

When we “go home” at the end of life’s journeys – life’s troubles and trails, as we often confront them, or interact with people who do – we have opportunity to contemplate. I have a friend with three small girls whose husband, a pastor, recently died of cancer; another friend watching a neighbor’s husband dying day by day before their eyes… We can all supply et ceteras.

We can think in these moments about the Bible’s reassurance about home; about God “calling us home.” When you think about it, home is not somewhere strange and alien you go to for the first time. A home is something to which you return… that comfortable place that is waiting, in fact prepared, for you.

We can know we are on our way home, and it does not have to be not a strange journey, but a warm reunion.

+ + +

Click: Going Home