Jn 14:1-4

Liz Dumain

I moved house recently, and had a couple of hours when I had handed in the keys to my old home, and had yet to receive the keys for the new home that we were moving in to later that day. It was the weirdest feeling! Suddenly I felt quite lost - my belongings were on a truck travelling to a new home - although it wasn't 'home' until we had collected our keys, yet home was no longer where I had been for the last 3 years & I couldn't get in there either! It made me feel surprisingly vulnerable.....

Home is a funny thing - going home can mean so many different things to different people. I can remember when I first 'left home' - home became the place where I wasn't - so if I was going to stay with my parents I would be 'going home', and then at the end of the weekend I would be 'going home' back to where I had come from - all a bit confusing..... For a while I felt as if I didn't have a home at all - as I was becoming more connected to my new 'home' whilst working out what it was to leave my 'family home' & for a while I felt disconnected & rootless.

'Don't let your hearts be troubled', Jesus continued. 'Trust God - and trust me too! There is plenty of room to live in my Fathers house. If that weren't the case, I'd have told you wouldn't I? I'm going to get a place ready for you! And if I do go and get a place ready for you, I will come back and take you there with me, so that you can be there where I am. You know the way where I am going after all.' Jn 14:1-4

We're not really rootless of course - it's just that sometimes we lose the sense of the fact that we have a home in heaven, because it gets crowded out by the insecurities and 'busy-ness' of our day-to-day lives. Jesus only ever uses the phrase 'my Fathers house' to describe 2 places, one, the place where He is going and the other to describe the Temple in chapter 2 v16. The temple was the place that stood as the visual image of heaven touching earth, and now Jesus talks to his disciples about a new place where heaven meets earth - a new place in His Fathers house that is open to each and every one of us.

We need never feel abandoned, or rootless and are never without a home - we may not be able to see the way ahead, but we can trust that there is a place waiting for us, and the keys to that 'house' are held out to us in the loving, accepting, forgiving hand of Jesus.