A Given Home

There is something about cooking tacos here in this kitchen that settles it for me:

This house is home.

The sizzling peppers and onions waft and mingle with the lime and cilantro, and I feel like I’m before every stove we’ve ever owned, every house that we called ours. My souls exhales here and begins to dwell. I stop drifting and put in roots all at once, deep beneath the wood floor. Here at the hearth.

This place has been held by dozens before me, as this parsonage sheltered many a pastor and their families. For over a century, this has been a sacred place of retreat and rest, away form the pulpit and pews.
And with the turning of keys, I know that this place cannot be owned, only inhabited. You can only dwell here.
Not possess.
Not even keep.
But fill.
And so at the hearth I join the others who have been invited in, who have been granted the great privilege to serve and love in this place. What grace.

Weeks before we arrived to this cornfield lot, there were women, four blessed women, like those with myrrh and fresh linens, those who went before to ready the body. So these faithful ladies wandered in early in the morning with Windex and vacuums to ready this house, to honor us with a place. Because places that are prepared for us are one of the clearest images of the workings of our Christ even now.

John 14 rolls through my mind in waves:

Do not let your hearts be troubled… I go and prepare a place for you… you may also be where I am…

My hand grips the spatula tight.

I will not leave you orphans. I will come to you.

The work of the church ladies is a holy work, for it mirrors the actions and intents of the Son at this very moment. And we, all of us, are the recipients of this new place, a readied home: a new heaven and a new earth.

And when we see it, when our feet step into it all, what will that arrival feel like? What could heaven possibly be in all its glory and light and radiance, God fully in all things- even fully in us, and us in Him? How do we even begin to imagine it now, in the waiting?

Because we do wait.

I remember the weeks in boxes. The month in and out of the van and lugging a suitcase, longing for this hearth, for a place. The arrival is more often proceeded by a long wait followed by a “moving in” or a settling. Home takes time.

This earth we inhabit, the aspects of the Kingdom we see now, even with our Advocate, feels transitory, like a known, loved house— yet one filled with boxes. I believe it was St. Augustine of Hippo who once said “we are but travelers on a journey without as yet a fixed abode; we are on our way, not yet in our native land; we are in a state of longing.” Longing for when we arrive.

I imagine and almost breathe the tortillas right in. It will feel like peace, the peace He gives so unlike the world. It will be something like tacos at the stove and an exhale. But even more. Praise God.