Going home for the holidays is a bit of a mixed bag. Especially when one's family tries to fit four families, three cities, two Christmas'and a New Year party into one week.
While I had a lot of fun during my week with family I also experienced a great deal of annoyance, sadness, rage and frustration. Sometimes, seeing my family feels like visiting a peaceful oasis and I leave home refreshed and inspired. Other times, it feels like I've been thrown to the lions and I leave feeling confused, guilty and grateful to have survived.
Mostly I think that this is probably normal but occasionally I wonder if I'm missing something. If there isn't some lesson I should be learning, some thing I shouldn't be saying, some action I should be doing that would guarantee that home is always a safe place.
Then again, maybe no place, home or otherwise, is ever really safe. Maybe that's just a hard reality that we get to face as adults. And maybe once we accept it as fact, we can stop working so hard to hide from the bad and instead can move forward with purpose looking to redemption and peace. But I personally find that so hard!
Maybe it's the optimist/perfectionist in me but it just doesn't sit well with me that there is pain and suffering in all the places I love best. I long for a life free from it. Perhaps this is what Paul talks about in Philippians when he says he is hard pressed between departing this sinful world to be with Jesus and the need to stay behind laboring for the Kingdom of Heaven here on earth. Like Paul, I long for perfection. For perfect love to reign and for me to be under it's safe fold. I ache for a world where we are free and I am broken and angered and hurt to see all the places this world I live in falls short. It is very hard not to despair. I long to be with perfection in heaven but He calls me to be here now and therein lies my angst.
How am I supposed to live when there is so much suffering and pain? How am I supposed to love when it will always be a broken love? How am I supposed to work for justice when the work will never be done? How can I smile when I know I will be crying tomorrow? And yet that is our call as Christians. To be in the world and not of it. To be seekers of peace and instruments of justice in a hurting world and, most importantly, to hurting people. We are commanded to be lights in the darkness, the salt of the earth and messengers of hope in the face of great evil. This is our call. This is my call. And I am overcome by the impossibility of it.
If no place on earth is safe, if no place here offers love unending, if I can never call any place my home, how am I to live? How will I live?
I feel like that is the question before me. And much depends on the answer. In light of God's call and in light of this world's brokenness, how will I choose to live?
Will I constantly grasp after small moments of imitation and distraction trying to shut out the world until the inevitable sneaks up on me? Or will I finally turn to face the truth and make my peace with it so that I can live with power and purpose?
Will earth or heaven be my home?
4 comments:
I think you've hit on the meaning of the adage, "You can never go home again." It's the place you love, but it's broken. Also, you're right, we are called to live as foreigners in this world, with our citizenship in Heaven.
But take heart, we aren't called to this good work without help: we have the Holy Spirit dwelling within us. He doesn't let us down, or fail us. This longing for perfection will be one day satisfied...
Interesting thoughts....pretty deep. I struggle also with many of the same questions. Just remember not every pain is meant to be healed, and not every need is meant to be filled. We are simply supposed to glorify Christ and reveal him in the world......Easily spoken, not easily done.....
Thanks for the good post. I've been mulling it over for the last few days.
Thanks for being so awesome, Ellyn!!! I like reading your blogs...Aaron just sent the link to me today!!!
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