When are we going home?

Christ Church, Exeter

June 13, 2013

When are we going home?

Moving day has come and gone this past week (finally!) and I can now safely say that we are New Hampshire residents. Our worldly possessions arrived to our house in nearby Greenland. (If anyone is moving soon and needs some boxes, do let me know).

In 1998 when our youngest child Lydia was three years old, she said something that has stayed with me over the years. We were unpacking the many boxes of our move from Glastonbury, Connecticut to Silver Spring, Maryland and both of our kids were doing what kids do on moving day: they were having a blast playing in giant empty boxes. Even before the furniture arrived, they loved running from room to room and creating an echo by shouting in the empty spaces.

Lydia ran up to us at the end of moving day with a giant smile on her face and said: "Mommy and daddy, I love our new house!   When are we going home?"  As a three year old, she knew intuitively what many of us have come to learn in life - that there is a difference between a house or an apartment and a home. Home is about feeling secure, wanted, free, loved and respected. Houses increase in value and decrease: they are bought and re-sold again. They age and some can even be destroyed and lost to natural disaster.  A house can be replaced: a home is much more.

I believe that what we are about as a church when we are at our best is creating a place where all of us can be at home -- safe, respected, challenged and loved. If "home is where your heart is" then I hope we connect being truly at home with arriving to the heart of what God most desires for us.  

And yes... I too love our new house.  And thanks to so many of you, after two months, I feel at home.  

  

   Blessings,

The Rev. Mark B. Pendleton

Rector