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13.06.08 Where is your home? |
How would you answer this question? Would you name your permanent residence? Xy Avenue in who knows which city?
 Since I am living in Peru as a missionary, I don’t find an easy answer to that question anymore. Yet this question may be asked even more often to myself or other missionaries than to others – usually when I am coming to Germany for a “home leave” or when I am about to return to Peru. My personal report in one Globe News magazine ends saying: My flight to Peru leaves Germany Jun 12th – going from one home to the other…
This time I have been wondering more than usual: Where is my home? Or do I have more than one? Is that possible? What does the word “home” mean to me?
My familiar 4 (or more) walls, a cozy fire in the fireplace, my own, warm bed? To me that would be my house in our centre in the Peruvian highlands…
Or maybe the familiar fellowship with dear people that I have known and that have known myself for a long time? The harmony of thoughts, emotions and values, or the loving sympathy, trust and understanding? That I have experienced at many places with different people – friends or family…..
Or is “home” the safety of familiar surroundings, where I know my way around even when it is dark, where I don’t need to search or ask for things, because I know the place? That would mean that I have many “homes”, too…
But if “home” means to strike roots, I need to restrict the term: Roots feed and hold me and my deepest roots are certainly in Jesus himself. Even culturally and socially it is not possible for me to strike roots in several places at the same time, but well at the same time in Germany and Peru. Although I know that there will never (again) be a 100% rooting on either side; the maximum may be 75% on the one side and 75% on the other side, just like the authors S.G. Lingenfelter and M.K. Mayers said in their book “Cross cultural ministry”, when they describe a “150%” cross cultural worker – and I still lack some of that.
While talking to a friend in Germany he said: “Yes, your life is much wider due to your ministry in Peru – at the same time you are losing some of your rootage….” And that is true: Moving in two (or more) different cultures at the same time has its benefit and price at the same time.
Eventually it suddenly dawned on me that this is not a bad preparation on our final “Change of home” that every man has to face once our life here on earth reaches its end. Jesus says about us, his followers that we are “in this world – but just like Jesus himself – not of this world” (John 17:11 and 14) and that “our citizenship is in heaven” (Phil 3:20). My visible home on this earth – however pretentious or simple, homey or soberly styled – is temporary, while the invisible home, that dwelling place Jesus has prepared in his father’s house, is eternal. (2.Cor.4:18; Joh. 14:2-3)
Let’s be honest: Isn’t it exciting, this living place preparation Jesus is doing, without broker’s fees, without hidden paragraphs in tenancy law?! He has paid the price already. Like that the term “home” gets a much wider, eternal aspect – We don’t say for nothing after a believer’s death: He went home!
It is out of question that I love to live in my house in the Peruvian mountains and I am happy about any “Home experience” in Germany! But when, due to my ministry, I spend nights in different places (sometimes rather improvisational), I remember Jesus reciting the foxes den and the bird’s nests saying that the son of man has no place where to lay his head (Mt. 8:20). That is true, he was permanently travelling in his ministry! Do I as his follower have the right to assert my right on a comfortable sleep-, living-, and home place?
One more time: I don’t want to take anybody’s pleasure in a nice home, certainly not my own. I also like it cozy and I am sure that God likes it as well. But I don’t want to forget that it is only temporary and that the best, permanent home is still to come – and that will be a 100% homecoming!
 I like the comparison I once read in a Christian calendar. It talked – in accordance to Hebrews 11,13 – about the ancient fathers in the Old Testament – Abraham, Isaac, Jacob – who were living in tents as nomads. The author wrote:
“Again and again they were driving their tent pegs into the sand, but they did not strike roots. Mobile believers on their way towards their destination. They were strangers, campers on earth in order to one day become citizens of heaven. And we are living here like we had eternal right of abode….
….Where are the joyful strangers amongst us, that are happy to be guests in this world, because they are looking forward to being citizens in another world. Where are the confident campers that – in this life – desire for nothing but a campsite, because with God they received the promise of an eternal stand? Believers with caravan mentality wanted!
I desire this flexibility, frugality and at the same time perspective towards eternity for myself and for each one of us.
Birgit Ufermann |
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