Last year sometime I downloaded a Kindle app onto my PC because I wanted to cheaply purchase a book that was very expensive to buy in hard copy. Later in the year, when I changed to an Android phone, I downloaded a Kindle app for that too and have used it frequently to read books while waiting at the doctor or taking the train etc. Then Grant bought me a Kindle for Christmas.
From time to time I browse the Amazon Kindle store – it is amazing the books you can purchase for free or just 99 cents. And they arrive on all three of my Kindle places within seconds. Wow!
This week I bought “The Longing for Home” by Frederick Buechner. Buechner is a US author whom I have read lots of quotes from in other author’s writings, but I have never read a whole book of his.
The first chapter is about that longing for home in all of us. Do you feel it?
I do, often. There’s that sense that home is not here on this earth, it is somewhere else.
Some of this for me might come from the fact that we shifted a lot when I was a child, and I have lived in around 26 houses in my 52 years. Like Buechner, the place that lives on in my memory is my maternal grandmother’s home. I found myself jealous that his Nana (whom he called Naya) had lived until he was in his mid thirties. Mine died when I was 27. Although an uncle lived on in her house afterward for 17 years, it wasn’t the same place without Nana there.
Buechner’s Naya lived in Woodland Rd, Pittsburgh, mine in Woodlands Rd, Opotiki, but I share that sense of specialness that lingers even today at her memory.
I am very happy within my family, my church, and the house I live in, but this longing for home cannot be fulfilled on this earth. I think it is a longing to be fully known, fully accepted for who I truly am, without any strings attached.
The memory of the way Nana’s face would light up when I (or any of her grandchildren) arrived reminds me that Jesus loves us all in the same way and one day will welcome us into our true home if we belong to Him.
I love the scene in the movie “The Way” when Martin Sheen stops at a house to see if there’s a place to stay. The family and guests are sitting outside having dinner. The owner of the house stands up to greet him: “Welcome! Come on in! We’ve been expecting you.”
Do you know Jesus? He longs to say that to you too…