Home...

With Christmas break and all of the snow and now MLK day, I'm beginning to feel really spoiled with all of the days off that we've had! I mean, I'm not complaining :) But it is a little weird.

Today I am trying to be really productive. I'm making a gift for a friend; looking into ordering a special mail-delivered cupcake for a friend's birthday; purchasing, printing, and binding the new Bible study I'm doing with my freshman girls - very excited about it - Tim Keller's study on Galatians! I'm also going to the grocery story, blogging (currently), picking my roommate up from the airport, and going to the gym. Whew! Don't be too impressed with me though - this is totally making up to complete laziness for the past few days of snow!

On a more reflective note, I was at small group last night and was challenged to express where God has me right now, even just this past week. I love this group of women that I meet with on Sunday nights - it is such a blessing in my life, and such an answer to prayer that the Lord literally dropped in my lap soon after I moved here. We usually just take one discussion question and spend the whole night just talking it through - sharing what God is doing, how He's speaking to us, praying. So simple, yet such beautiful times together. Last night's question was simply, "Where does God have you right now?" Interesting question, since this has been my question to Him lately! One of the women began to share how she has been in a hard season of life, and how she is learning even more deeply how we are always looking for the "next thing" to satisfy and fulfill us. She was comparing her situation (a wife and mom of 4 kids) to a friend's (a 35-yr-old single woman), and how both of them were talking the other day about the lies that we believe will make us fulfilled. She said maybe we are supposed to have this unsettled feeling, this longing for more. Maybe we just need to recognize that this is our longing for our true home, and we will always have it, at least hints of it, this side of eternity. Or it is simply a sign that we have yet to figure out how to be fully satisfied in Jesus all of the time. Maybe both.

I was just struck by this thought, because it is so true and so clearly part of what the Lord has been teaching me lately. I have had these thoughts circling in my head for months now - how this place is not my home, yet how I long for community and to feel at home in a place. How much of this is because I was created for that and is a good thing, and how much of it is me seeking fulfillment, sense of belonging and value, and joy in things that will never satisfy. It's sad and strange how we as humans seem bent on taking the gifts that God has given, and twisting them into something that they were never meant for. He made me to find joy in community, He made us with a longing for that feeling associated with home, but when we look to people and places and even those feelings themselves to satisfy us, we are missing it all. He is home. He is fellowship and joy. And He provides us with amazing gifts of friends and family and familiar places simply because He loves us. But heaven is my home.

So I seem to be in a place where I'm not quite comfortable yet. I think He's doing it on purpose. I think I make comfort and the sense of belonging and great community an idol in my life, and He will have no idols. I feel a little out of place in my life right now. But I want to invest where I am. I want to have joy each day, in the simple gifts that are given, and take delight in where I am, right now. I want Him to be my home, and because of that, to be at ease, full of joy, and at peace wherever I am. I want to bless others with the infectious attitude that comes from one who is at home in the Lord first - and everything else is simply added onto that. He leads us down the paths that lead to true joy, true belonging, true community... He leads us to Himself. He leads us home.