“There is plenty of room for you in God’s home. If that weren’t so, would I have told you that I’m on my way to get a room ready for you? ” ~John 14:2″ The Message, Eugene Peterson

This morning I was having a conversation with one of my colleagues who creates magic every week as a cook in our church kitchen. She was describing to me her joy at reaching a goal this past year. She had set the goal of planning menus so well that there was very little, if any, food that would go to waste. In the course of the conversation, she said something like, “I do not want to waste any food. I want to be able to re-home any food that is left over.”

Re-home? Have you heard this world before? I hadn’t. But the sound of it captured my imagination, softened my heart. I feel as if we hear the word ‘homeless’ so often these days and the plight of homelessness is ever present just outside the doors of our church. But ‘re-home’ is something new and different and a word that will make its way into my lexicon.

I think of the stories in the Hebrew scriptures in which God’s people were re-homed. Moses and his exodus brood traveled through the wilderness looking this way and that, complaining, gaining wisdom, waiting to be re-homed. Other prophets challenged and urged the people of Israel to wake up to the Holy’s movement in their lives and in their lands, in a sense, saying: “Come on people! Make a new home!”

In the Christian scriptures, Mary and Joseph and the Child Jesus, traveled from one place to another trying find a new home, a different home, where they could grow into the lives they were called to live. Saul had an experience of God on the road to Damascus and was re-homed into a life of following Jesus. He even got a new name out of the deal….re-homed and renamed…..all in one fell swoop.

So much in our world is longing to be re-homed. Looking past the obvious and easy things like old coats and boots, sofas and cookware, cars and bicycles that can find a new home through giveaways and thrift stores, there are much deeper and hope-filled longings humans have for their lives. Children who struggle with poverty and living on the fault lines along with the adults in their lives, long to be re-homed in a place of confidence and compassion, safety and peace, a warm, predictable meal.  Wounded souls and those with mental illness long to be re-homed in a safe, healthy world, in a mind and body that does not fail them. Those most lonely among us hope to be re-homed in a place where they can reach out and be touched by the unconditional love they believe God wants for them.

What needs to be re-homed in your life? What part of you feels lost, without a nest in which to settle? What home do you long for? What does it look like, sound like, feel like, smell like?

My prayer is that however home needs to appear for you, in whatever form, on whatever shore, that you find yourself walking through the door of the place that feels safe and soft and brings wholeness and hope to your days. May it be for you, for me, and for all.

Have a blessed weekend……………….