There's No Place Like Home

Tuesday, June 13, 2023

So also Jesus suffered and died outside the city gates to make his people holy by means of his own blood.  So let us go out to him, outside the camp, and bear the disgrace he bore.  For this world is not our permanent home; we are looking forward to a home yet to come.  Hebrews 13:12-14

Most of us are familiar with Dorothy in the Wizard of Oz.  She found herself in a strange land, and desired nothing more than to go back home.  Glenda, the “good witch” outfits Dorothy with magic red slippers and tells her to close her eyes, click her heels three times, and say the phrase over and over, there’s no place like home; there’s no place like home.

For some people a church is much like the ancient temple, or even the tabernacle in the wilderness…a building…hardly a home.  The writer to the Hebrews makes the point that fellowship with an eternal God is not a static issue.  Human beings are mobile, growing or dying, a soul never entombed  Buildings stay where they’re constructed.  We can be lost, in the sense of losing our way, or living in disobedience, in the far country, away from God’s fellowship.  

We can be unready for dwelling in our permanent home, a house not made by human hands. That unreadiness is born of an unwillingness to “bear the disgrace” of the One who saves us.  It may not be beligerance, but rather holding-back from totally giving oneself to Christ as a witness.  It can be described as coming to a worship service as a spectator, rather than a participating member of the team. 

Spectators have little invested in church, other than an hour of time in any given week; by contrast, worshippers are there to offer God praise, and all they have.  They come with open, empty hands, willing (even eager) to have God fill those hands with whatever task, blessing, challenge, or mountain to climb, God may pick-out for us.  It is this willingness, to leave the building and enter the harvest field, which describes worship…not merely singing a few songs and listening to the preacher’s words; that describes enduring ritual – hardly worship.

Before I turned two years old Mom and Dad left the bustle of New York City for the serenity of a little hamlet (a “hamlet” is not breakfast food, or one of Shakespeare’s characters, but rather a community, a bit smaller than a village or town).  

We had dirt roads, an old two-story house for a school district, and a town that had managed to stay very small since its founding in the 17^th century. The place was named Hauppauge, which is a Native American word translated “sweet water”.  

My parents weren’t interested in becoming land barons; they were concerned with raising two boys to be men..  The tiny 4-room house on Long Island was surrounded by tall oaks, elms and whatever scrub brush could eak-out a living in the sand.  Dad cleared most of our yard with a hand axe, and a lot of sweat.  Whether you’re raised in a big city, or a rural backwater, commitment to what life God gives you is what teaches you there’s no place like home.

For You Today 

The only thing left to say is:  When you join a church, make sure you make a commitment to the home part…otherwise the building is just a house!

You chew on that as you hit the Rocky Road; have a blessed day!

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There are about 2,500 devotional posts and 400 sermons in the Rocky Road Devotions library.  To dig deeper explore some of these:   Restless  and  Which One?                                          

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Unless noted, Scripture quoted from The New Living Translation^©