Today we leave Abbotsford and head down to Fresno, a place that, up until last August, we called "home". But now it doesn't feel as much like home, since it will be a temporary place where we reside prior to launching/mobilizing into a long term missions assignment in Peru, possibly as soon as early next Fall. We have been working with the kids on this concept, that "home" is where your toys are, which may be different from where they were yesterday or last month.
I typed in the word "home" on Biblegateway and got 188 hits. Especially in the Old Testament, this word carried significant meaning. Even now, in our training, we often talked about the concept of coming back to your home country, I guess with the idea being the place where you originally came from.
What I have learned from being a missionary kid, is that home is a concept that is difficult to define, difficult to pin down, especially when you are on the move. Going back to an earlier post about rituals, there is a lot of comfort in the word home. But when you are on the go, living in temporary spaces, or in another country, can it be defined the same way as it would be for someone who stays in one house, or community, for a lifetime?
I believe it can. This world is a temporary home for each of us. I have enjoyed thinking about that this week, that our current Ens family reality reflects this temporary nature of our human condition. It is a learning experience, how to develop traditions and processes as a family that reflect the stability concepts of the word home, while not necessarily associating that with a building or structure.
I guess this may have been quite a rambling blog this morning! Forgive me please if it was, as we must be leaving this "home" sometime today to get to our hotel room in Portland! And some good friends are coming by our "home" in 15 minutes to bring us breakfast! If you think about that even, if they were to come by tomorrow at the same time, this would no longer be the Ens home....
May you each find Christ's presence in your homes this Christmas, in whatever home-format that looks like!
On the road,
Lowell
