Is Home Really Where the Heart is?
Do you ever feel you don’t belong? It may not be a bad thing.
What is home?
Eight years ago, I embarked on a 5022km journey to study abroad. I moved from a small Central American country to Vancouver, Canada. To say I experienced an intense culture shock would be an understatement. During this time, it was easy to be fascinated by every experience, to attribute every variance between me and my peers to ‘cultural differences.’ It was easy to draw a line between where I was physically (Vancouver), and where home was (El Salvador). There was an air of temporality to the whole arrangement that helped me maintain the parameters of my life and my identity neatly delineated.
This became more complicated once I graduated and decided to stay in Canada. Now I worked here, paid taxes here, and spent the summer here. Though every time I went back, I kept on referring to it as ‘going home,’ the reality is that for all intents and purposes, ‘home’ had taken a new meaning.
Living in the in-between
For a few years, after I graduated, I wrestled with the concept of belonging. While my immigration status became gradually more permanent in this land I had come to love, part of me still seemed to be attached to Latin America, both as a geographical space and as a collective construct. The thing is, the more time I spent here, the more I got used to doing life here. I had learned to be an adult here. Yet, my language and many of my customs were from over there. As a result, I spent many years living in a sort of liminal space where I was neither here nor there. It was both disorienting and deceiving.
As the pandemic progressed and orders were issued to stay home, I churned on that word… home. Was this home? As the borders closed, the distance with my loved ones — those same ones we were advised to stay close to — was widened further. But, contrary to what my deepest fears had told me during the early days of the pandemic (that I was ‘stuck’ here), I was slowly filled with an ineffable sense of peace. I joined a church small group where I immediately felt welcomed. I started participating in outdoor activities I never had before. And before I knew it, the needle in my compass that pointed ‘home’ started shifting.
As the Christmas holidays drew near, my family and I decided I would go to spend it with them. I took all possible precautions and boarded a near-empty flight. While the time with my family was refreshing, and it filled my tank for emotional connection like nothing else would’ve, I had a disconcerting sense of something at the back of my mind that accompanied me all the way to my seat on the plane on my flight back to Canada. As I sat, I realized that for the first time in eight years, I wasn’t quite sure if I was leaving home or going home.
I can’t say that I’ve ever heard God speak audibly to me. But that day, as I was discreetly shedding some tears as I saw the airport become nothing but a white speck near a luscious Pacific coast, I got a clear impression of the words: you are not of this world. Immediately, a sense of peace washed over me and I had one of those ‘eureka’ moments people talk about. Something within me clicked. Of course, neither felt like home, they weren’t meant to. I had spent years trying to figure out my cultural identity, trying hard to fit in and belong in both places, just to be left constantly defeated. But at that moment it finally hit me: that was the point.
The call to live as pilgrims
Beloved, I beg you as sojourners and pilgrims, abstain from fleshly lusts which war against the soul — (1 Peter 2:11, NKJV)
One of our calls as Christians is to live as pilgrims in this world. This has implications in practically every area of our lives. It affects how we spend our time, our money, our relationships, and even our spare time. In practice though, it is sometimes hard to keep this reality in mind as we go about our days.
It is ironically easy to live every day forgetting the one sure characteristic of our time on earth: its temporality. It is exciting to plan things that will make our existence on earth more comfortable, to make use of products and services that make enjoyment more convenient and expedient, in short — to feel more at home. The hardest part is remembering that after all is said and done (and spent), most of those things we so arduously did and acquired have little meaning in light of eternity.
The interesting thing about this tension is, of course, that we are in fact invited to enjoy many of the good gifts God has graciously granted us on earth, to laugh and be merry, to live and to love. Yet, we are simultaneously called to lay down our lives, to deny ourselves, to serve others, to have self-control, and to intentionally do things that might make us uncomfortable for the sake of the Gospel.
I think this is no coincidence. Invitations, callings or directives remind us of where home really is. I am always comforted by Jesus’ prayer when He asked the Father not to take us from the world, but to keep us from the evil one (John 17:15). Being a Christian and living in holiness does not mean becoming oblivious to what happens in the world, never enjoying anything about our life on earth. It also does not mean suppressing our emotions in the hard times as proof of our eternal convictions. But, it does mean not setting our hearts on any of these things and holding on to them as the end all be all; it does mean remembering that ultimately, all of the things we experience on earth are a dim reflection of the broader spiritual context in which we exist, the one to which we truly belong.
Home is where the heart is…if our heart is set on things above.
So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen, since what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal. (2 Corinthians 4:18, NIV)
The premise of the saying that home is where the heart is, though admirable, negates to an extent both the hope we as Christians have of eternal salvation and the salvific experience we can enjoy while still on earth. If our hearts are set on things on earth, we will inevitably pour ourselves into making this home despite what the scriptures say, only to find that it is like trying to fit the proverbial square peg in a round hole. However, because our salvation is both now and not yet, if our hearts are truly set on things above, we will start enjoying and experiencing the reality of having a true, permanent dwelling wherever we go and whatever might come. As C.S. Lewis artfully put it in The Great Divorce,
“ …earth, if chosen instead of Heaven, will turn out to have been, all along, only a region in Hell: and earth, if put second to Heaven, to have been from the beginning a part of Heaven itself.”
