Moving Day

It was surreal watching the room dissolve around us. There we sat in my dear friend’s living room, casually chatting about ministry and the church, about our lives and relationships, as movers plucked vases from shelves and lamps from tables and walked out of the room. The careful arrangement of pictures and furniture that formed the fabric of what my friend and his wife called “home” unraveled, the movers gently pulling the dangling string. All the threads were being gathered that they would be woven into another home in another state.

Think of your own home and how it is decorated: shreds of memory behind glass frames, sofas and Laz-E-boys positioned just so, specific paint colors slapped here and curtains hung there, all to transform wood, walls and windows into something more than the timbers, metal and nails. It’s the moment that a house (a lifeless structure) turns into a home (a dwelling of living people). We carefully arrange all these things to optimize our comfort and security or rearrange them periodically to get a sense of newness. Then there are the piles of letters/laundry/tools/boxes that clutter countertops, floors and basements but we don’t mind too much because we’re used to it. It’s all part of the system. The end-result reflects our personalities and tastes: sloppy or tidy, bold solid colors or mismatched. But more importantly, it is a safe place; our place that we daydream about at work, where we feel at rest.

I think about those who are suffering from the floods in the Midwest, or wildfires in California, or the big quake in China, and wonder about their homes (or what’s left of them). I wonder what they call home now or if they have any place to retreat for safety.

“Security” has become the household catchphrase in the months since 9/11 (which left many houses emptier than before). If you’ve traveled by plane in the last several months, you’ve certainly endured the tedious delay of long lines and the time it takes to swab your luggage’s zippers and test it for explosive chemicals. While I can’t imagine it doesn’t do some good, are we really more “secure” from the dozens of other threats to our lives that (unlike the photo we want to hang in the living room) we have absolutely no control over?

One of the hard realities of life on this planet is that any of our carefully arranged bits of our lives that prop us up and protect us from sadness and grief can be yanked away at any moment. Our houses and expensive stuff. Our memory, health and hobbies. Or most scary, our loved ones.

How then can we do anything else but learn how to lean solely on Jesus, the Rock, which can never be taken? Doing so means we cannot put our faith in the lives we’ve made for ourselves but for the one that Christ alone can give us. We have but to lean on Him, like a child wailing into his mother’s lap, like a soldier with a wounded leg, like weeping in a friend’s solid hug. Then we’ll find that our home is not really in anything we can touch but woven entirely in the fabric of unmovable presence of God; a home build with the wood and nails of Christ’s tree and founded on the undefeatable power of the resurrection.

“The LORD is my rock, my fortress, and my deliverer, my God, my rock in whom I take refuge,
my shield, and the horn of my salvation, my stronghold.” ~Psalm 18:2