Homesick
Originally sent February 1, 2025
In 2012 our family sold our home and most of our possessions to work as missionaries overseas. It was an exciting time, full of adventure, and also profound loneliness. For eight years I felt a bit out of place or maybe even homesick. There is something deep within us that longs for home and connection. Not just a physical place, but a sense of belonging where we feel known and loved. Home is where we let down our guard, where we find comfort in familiarity, where we do not have to prove ourselves. Maybe you have never lived in another country, but I imagine that all of us go through seasons of feeling uprooted, disconnected, or isolated.
Jesus used the relational language of home as he spent time with his friends the night of his arrest,“Remain in me, and I will remain in you. For a branch cannot produce fruit if it is severed from the vine, and you cannot be fruitful unless you remain in me.”(John 15:4 NLT) Remain, abide, stay, live; translators use many different words, but they all have this idea of hospitality and home; a place of belonging and connection. John uses the same word in a letter to early Christ Followers, “We know how much God loves us, and we have put our trust in his love. God is love, and all who live in love live in God, and God lives in them”. I John 4:16
When we put our trust in God and begin to live in his love we can feel God living in us. God wants to meet us in our loneliness and isolation. Perhaps you feel spiritually homeless…adrift, uncertain, or distant. He is inviting you to live in His presence. To abide in God is to live in the reality of His love, just as a child lives in the security of a well-loved home. When we abide in Christ, we are not striving to earn our place, but instead we are resting in the truth that we are already welcomed.
Pastors Cyd & Geoff Holsclaw define joy as, “being in the presence of someone who is glad to be with you”. Joy is a good way to measure how at home you feel with God. I am absolutely convinced that God is always glad to be with you. God doesn’t just love you. He really likes you too!
If this is something you would like to explore further then send me a quick email and I will pass along an article that has been helpful to me.
