This weekend has been homecoming for many, and the homecoming atmosphere fills this part of Fall. Ross and several other schools celebrated their homecoming last night.
My family has our annual homecoming celebration around this time each year and it is celebrated in, of all places, a cemetary that my great-great grandfather started in 1889 when he asked to be buried under a large tree on the land his family settled on in Kentucky.
It is a word that I have heard in reference to celebration my whole life.
"Homecoming" and "home" can mean different things. It can be a place we live in that has been in our family for many years or be new to us.
It can be a shared home like this church which has been home to many generations of people. It can be personal, it can be spiritual, it can be poetic.
The thing that it usually always has in common is that it is a place of rest. Let me read a poem about home.
Seeking Home Comfort
It may be a distance great or a distance small,
But there's something that always brings us home.
We long for that simple rush feeling like no other,
When we enter that haven place akin to us all.
It is home we seek when our hearts are lost,
That is where it has been said by some to be.
Finding ourselves again in a cold lonely world,
Is the reason we seek this element at all cost.
Firm ground to set our feet and recenter a life,
This place of common bond gives us peace.
Built by many and passed on through years,
Its walls have endured many joys, trials, and strife.
What magic lies in this ancestral land patch abode?
It is not black but instead the brilliant white light of love.
No matter what wrongs have happened, or what loss,
Rest awaits there to all who carry heavy burden and load.
No questions are ever asked, it is surely our home,
Answers for life ails can be found there among the we.
Warmth and freedom harmony lie within its gates,
A place we know and cherish when ending our roam.
Life has built us, but has often been destructive and numbing,
Giving back to us far less than experience cost has taken.
Comfort and acceptance holds a spiritual healing action,
In our mortal selves through this well needed home coming.
Bruce Lanham (2013)
The bible has many references of home and either leaving it or coming back to it, especially in the book of Job. But I believe 2nd Chronicles, chapter 5, verses 1-10 represents home the best because it shows how home is always with God if we choose and always something we seek in the end.
"For we know that when this earthly tent we live in is taken down (that is, when we die and leave this earthly body), we will have a house in heaven, an eternal body made for us by God himself and not by human hands. We grow weary in our present bodies, and we long to put on our heavenly bodies like new clothing. For we will put on heavenly bodies; we will not be spirits without bodies. While we live in these earthly bodies, we groan and sigh, but it’s not that we want to die and get rid of these bodies that clothe us. Rather, we want to put on our new bodies so that these dying bodies will be swallowed up by life. God himself has prepared us for this, and as a guarantee he has given us his Holy Spirit. So we are always confident, even though we know that as long as we live in these bodies we are not at home with the Lord. For we live by believing and not by seeing. Yes, we are fully confident, and we would rather be away from these earthly bodies, for then we will be at home with the Lord. So whether we are here in this body or away from this body, our goal is to please him. For we must all stand before Christ to be judged. We will each receive whatever we deserve for the good or evil we have done in this earthly body."(2 Corinthians 5:1-10 NLT)
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